


the blood on my hands scares me to death (maybe I'm waking up)

by gingergenower



Category: Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, JARVIS is still the resident AI, Panic Attacks, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Slow Burn, plus a bit more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-19 13:14:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9442226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingergenower/pseuds/gingergenower
Summary: Bucky lives in Stark Tower, and it's inevitable that he meets Darcy Lewis.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so, see tags for trigger warnings. I tried my best to be sensitive to those issues. If you feel I’ve mishandled something, tell me and I will fix it.  
> In my head this is sometime after Infinity Wars, when Tony’s had time to cool down and Bucky’s had time to process, maybe fight some other battles, start picking up pieces of his life.

Small, and limited to a lab three floors below them, the explosion sounds like no more than a half-hearted ‘poof!’. Steve sighs, rubbing his eyes, and Tony stares at the ceiling. 

“Well, shit,” Tony says. 

“Sir?” 

Pulling a hologram up over the desk, he swipes aside scientific equations and mathematics, filling out a cross section of a large, cylinder object. “I know, boom-” 

Steve leans in, watching him work. “So they’re definitely missiles." 

“All of them,” Tony nods, frowning at the screen. “Rocket artillery. HYDRA could put them on a plane and fire from the air they’re so small.” 

JARVIS is persistent. “Sir, I thought you should know that a medical team has been called to the site of the blast.” 

Tony freezes. “Those walls are Hulk-proof.” 

“They held up, sir, but it appears an employee has been injured.” 

*** 

In the elevator, Bucky is alone. He isn't alone much- he stuck to Steve’s side the first few weeks in the tower, and it became habit as much as anything- and his thoughts are on the 1939 Macallan scotch Tony bought in a few weeks back. Not getting drunk is limiting, but not enjoying drinking is optional. 

The floor shudders underneath him, the elevator lurching to a stop. 

He doesn’t stagger, but his hand gripped the railing so tight it bent out of shape. A red light blips in and out next to the emergency stop button, and his ears start ringing. The small space confines and he doesn’t like how elevators open up and expose him all at once- but now the doors aren’t opening and somehow that’s worse. 

Metal fingers force themselves between the doors and he pries them open. The floor they open up to is level with his chest, and he throws himself through the gap and rolls onto his feet, eyes narrowed. 

An open door twenty feet from him emits drifts of smoke, and a woman hunched against the opposite wall doesn’t move. 

Approaching her, wary, he checks her pulse. She has one. The room in front of them is wrecked, all twisted metal and exposed wiring, but it seems to be self-contained, so he shuts the door on the smoke and flames and moves back to the woman. 

Leaning over her, he doesn’t quite know what to do. 

“Sergeant Barnes?” 

The disembodied voice is one of the worst parts of the tower. He’s pretty sure the AI knows he hates it, because it rarely talks around him and almost never addresses him directly. 

“Yeah?” 

“Should I direct medical assistance to this location?” 

“She- yeah, she needs it.” 

Nothing broken, her airway’s clear, but her face is smeared with soot and dust and he smooths hair out of her eyes. They open, and she sits straight up. 

“Shit-!” 

Ducking back, Bucky keeps his hands in fists at his side. People aren’t receptive to him touching them. “You’ve been hurt-” 

A hand flies up to the back of her head, but she brings it back down because she realises there’s blood on it. She isn’t focussing on anything properly. “Ow.” 

“You need to lie down.” 

“No, I’m fine,” she says, looking in his direction. “Um, why are we on a roundabout? Everything’s spinny.” 

He’d have laughed if her eyes weren’t so glazed over. “Lie down, a doctor’s on the way.” 

Pulling a face, she leans back into the wall. “Hate needles.” 

1943 kicks in. People with concussion need keeping awake. “What’s your name?” 

“Darcy. Who are you?” she says, squinting at him. 

He hesitates. “I’m Steve Roger’s friend.” 

“Cool. Captain America’s buddy,” she says, more to herself than him. “You know, I have a Captain America plushie. I got it like, when I was 12, but that’s cos I had a crush on him. He’s in the lab now, he’s my mascot.” 

She talks at a thousand words a minute, and he blinks. “You work in the labs?” 

“Yeah, with Jane. See, she’s why I brought him into work- she’s got Actual God Thor, right? So he’s her mascot. Well, I needed an Avenger mascot too.” 

He holds back a smile, because she’s talking too much but he won’t hold it against her, and she looks at him again. 

“Oh my god, you’re totally Bucky. The Buckster. Don’t tell him about the plushie, okay, because it’s embarrassing. You have the arm, right? The metal one. My head really hurts,” she says, her voice trailing off. 

Her hand drops down, and he stares at it. It rests on his forearm, and she must feel the ridges of the shifting metal plates under her fingers, but she just closes her eyes. 

“Darcy, you need to stay awake,” he says, and he knows there’s an edge where there wasn’t before. 

“Don’t want to.” 

“Just a bit longer. Where did you get the plushie? …Darcy?” 

Leaning in, he pinches the inside of her upper arm, and she jolts awake. 

“-the fuck was that?!” she says, glaring at him. 

“You gotta keep your eyes open.” 

“Urgh… don’t tell me how to live my life…” 

A medical team bursts in through a working elevator, and Bucky throws himself backwards and out of their way. 

“She hit her head pretty bad,” he says. “Her name’s Darcy.” 

One of the doctors nods at him, and she tries to wriggle away when he shines a light into her eyes. “I’m Doctor Lawrence, I’m here to help. How’re you feeling, Darcy?” 

“I think I want to throw up.” 

“Blood pressure’s normal.” 

“On the stretcher?” 

They haul her away, disappearing back into the elevator. Bucky stands up, eyes fixed on the blood on the wall until Tony Stark skids into the corridor, and they look at each other. 

“That your blood?” 

“No.” 

“Huh.” 

*** 

Steve asks, and the disembodied voice assures them Darcy had a full CT scan and nothing abnormal was detected, but on Stark’s orders she’s staying for a 24 hour observation period. Her boss told her to fetch some files from another floor of labs, and she’d hit the button for the wrong floor. It was just bad luck. 

“Is she okay?” Bucky asks. He’d scrubbed his hands even though he hadn’t got any blood on them. 

“She’s well, Sergeant Barnes. She’s currently awake, I believe.” 

The whole knows-what-you’re-doing-where’re-you’re-sleeping-what-you’re-eating thing still makes Bucky’s skin crawl. He sighs, sitting down. 

“I didn’t kill her,” Tony says, typing something on a holographic keyboard. “She’s fine. So. Missiles. Personally, I’m not pleased that HYDRA have them headed our way.” 

“They might be moving them somewhere else,” Steve suggests. 

HYDRA changed its tactics after Steve outed them. It became less of a maniacal, political cult and more of a terrorist organisation, their desperation tangible, and one of their fourteen attacks on American soil had succeeded. None of them talked about Chicago, but they didn’t need to. They hadn’t forgotten. 

Bucky was less of an asset to the team because of the change of tactics, but he’d not had much insight anyway. He tends to just listen, now. 

“They might not,” Tony says, as though it doesn’t bother him. “Spidey’s working on the agent we caught, but the other agent killed three cops and made off with the paperwork.” 

“Spidey?” 

“Natasha,” Tony shrugs. “We don’t have a clue where the truck came from or where it’s going, yet.” 

“We need to know.” They might find a new chain of HYDRA bases, and that’d be more than a win. 

“I might be able to do some clever things and find out some stuff,” Tony says, smirking at his screen. “The composition of this charge… ooh, I want to play with that. That alloy is practically _erotic_ -” 

“Tony.” Steve's irritated. 

“Right. It’s rare,” he explains. “The army might know something. JARVIS-” 

“Entering the army’s database now, sir.” 

“Use Rhodey’s password.” 

“Pretty sure that’s illegal,” Bucky says, and Tony grins. 

“If they send me to jail about anything, it’ll be Dubai, 1999.” 

“I’m not going to ask.” 

“So I was going to-” 

“Sir, his password appears to have changed.” 

“I’ll do it manually. I bet I won’t need an algorithm, I’ll just be able to guess it.” 

Steve and Bucky watch him, and the screen flashes red and beeps, and Tony started squawking. 

“Make us undetectable, JARVIS! Jesus, the American military's so goddamn _paranoid_ -” 

Nudging Bucky, Steve’s already standing and jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the door. “Plausible deniability?” 

They leave and let Tony fight the army on his own. Steve’s heading towards the elevator. Bucky’s trailing him. 

“Is- JARVIS, is that woman definitely okay?” 

“Miss Lewis is well, Sergeant, and currently alone.” 

Steve slaps him on the shoulder as they get in the elevator, and pushes the wrong floor for the common area. “You need to see her.” 

“Why?” Bucky frowns. 

“I’m never sure someone’s alright till I’ve seen them.” 

Three minutes later, Bucky's rapping his knuckles on the already-open door, Steve on his way to the common area. Darcy beams on seeing him, dropping the papers she’s reading on her lap. “Cool! Hey, listen, thanks for saving my ass up there. I forgot Tony likes leaving explosives around.” 

He nods, only taking a few steps into the room. He’s here and he doesn’t know why he’s come. 

“You can sit down, if you want,” she says, catching a hair tie between her teeth and scraping her hair off her face. “I’m not doing much, and Jane’s gone back to ultra-important science-y star stuff.” 

Edging in, he takes the seat she gestured to, and he scratches his neck. He’s not sure what to say, but she narrows her eyes at him. 

“So. Firstly. Pretty sure I told you about my mascot.” 

He snorts. Knowing that a toy version of his best friend is lying around the tower was the best part of his morning. “Yeah. You did.” 

“Okay, excellent, that leads to secondly- if you tell Steve about that, I’ll hunt you down and beat you with it. Around the face.” 

Raising his eyebrows, he watches her. She could not be less of a threat, eyes wide and stern and not a touch of soldier in her. She’s also, he’s sure, trying not to smile herself. 

“I can take it.” 

“I will end you,” she says, finger pointing at him. 

He holds his hands up. “Fine, fine, I won’t tell him. I’ll find another one somewhere.” 

“The internet,” she says, nodding. “EBay would be my suggestion.” 

“Noted.” 

She smiles, and sips her coffee. 

He points at her papers. “What’re you reading?” 

“Science stuff. Well, no, not really, it’s more the math behind the science. The doc says it’s a good sign I can read, anywho.” 

“You’re a scientist?” he says, leaning in. Sometimes he forgets how much women can _do_ now. 

“Assistant, analyst, food delivery person, occasional mathematician, babysitter, there was that time I was an expert in molecular engineering.” She shrugs. “Depends on the day.” 

Bucky runs a hand through his hair, watching her with a kind of incredulity. She doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Your hair looks good, by the way.” 

“Thanks.” 

On a bad day, he’d been angry. He chopped it off, and the Black Widow cleaned it up until it looked something like Bucky, of the 107th. He wasn’t sure he wanted to look like that, but he sure as hell didn’t want to look like the Winter Soldier. 

He used to mess up his hair around girls he liked- Steve teased him about it- so he drops his hand. 

Smiling, nodding, she plays with the edge of the duvet. She turns away from him, her profile stirring something in him. 

“Have we met before?” 

“Nope.” She pops the ‘p’. “Talked to Steve in front of you before, but you were a bit edgy so I didn’t want to push it. I’ve said hi.” 

He clears his throat, leaning in. “In that case- I’m Bucky Barnes. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

She catches his eye, and holds it. “Darcy Lewis. Pretty sure the pleasure is mine, seeing as you looked after me when I was all… doozy.” 

“I didn’t do much.” 

She softens, her whole face sliding from self-deprecating to sad. “Don’t- _don’t_ , okay?” 

“What?” 

“Don’t minimise the good you do.” 

He nods, once, and she turns away, satisfied. She picks something up off her bedside table. “Have you listened to modern music yet?” 

He’d think she were the physical embodiment of whiplash, but he was pretty sure she was giving him an out. 

“-not so much, no.” 

“Tell me no one’s beaten me to showing you dubstep,” she says, eyes bright and practically begging. 

“…they haven’t.” 

A minute later, he wishes he’d said differently. Darcy had given him an earphone but he tore it out, standing up. 

“Dance music,” she says, grinning. 

“That’s offensive,” he says, pointing at the earphone. 

“I know, right? It’s great.” 

“What happened to real music?” 

“You sound so hipster,” she says, grinning. He’s pretty sure that doesn’t mean what it used to. “There’s plenty of genres of music, you’ll find your sound. Dubstep just isn’t it.” 

“It’s not,” he agrees, face crumpled up in pain. “That sounds like _machines_.” 

“It is, actually. It’s called electronic music, you make it all on a computer.” 

“That doesn’t make sense.” 

“Modern music,” she grins, tossing her music player in the direction of the bedside table. Bucky catches it before it hits the floor, and he doesn’t miss how she bites her lip to stop her lips opening in surprise. 

“We used to call ourselves modern,” he says, putting the player down. 

“You were the most modern people alive, at the time.” She smiles. “You know, gay people can get married now. And interracial couples. Humans have walked on the moon.” 

“Steve told me bits and pieces.” 

Learning it all is a bit much, but it’s nice to know love is freer. Despite HYDRA’s best efforts, little parts of the world are a little bit better. 

“I know you haven’t… _watched_ the changes happen. But I really hope I live as long as you; I want to see how much more we can do.” 

The naivety of that makes him want to leave, because you only get to see that progress when you’ve lost fights, battles, wars, parts of yourself over and over until you’ve got nothing left to give. She hasn’t seen that yet. Then he remembers he’s one who learnt about the Holocaust three weeks ago. Steve told him high schools cover Nazi Germany even now, and she’s probably known about something that brought him to his knees since she was sixteen. 

She’s hopeful anyway. He wants to stay. 

“I know it’s not what you dreamed about the future being, but it’s good, I promise.” 

Her smile reminds him of the kind of laughter you can’t hold back, or do without. It makes itself known until it hurts and you let go to it. 

His phone buzzes. 

“Thanks for saving me,” she says, waving as he excuses himself to talk to Steve. He sounds tired- the army and Rhodey have got nothing. When he hangs up, Bucky peeks his head back in, but she’s already asleep. 

*** 

He sees her the next morning, in the lobby of the tower. Bucky met Steve there because he’d been out following the lines of the freeway and waiting on another truck to interrupt, but Bucky doesn’t like leaving the tower yet. He meets Steve at the door with the intention of picking apart everything he found, but Steve was out for thirteen hours and there was nothing and no one. Natasha took over, taking a break from pressing the HYDRA agent. 

Darcy’s balancing a stack of papers and folders as big as a handwritten bible between her chin and one hand. The other struggles to wrestle her identity card out of her pocket for access to the lifts. 

Bucky jogs ahead of Steve and takes the weight of the stack before it topples. He takes half of it off her. 

“I suck at carrying heavy things,” she says as a kind of apology, but her face lights up because she sees it’s him. “Thank you!” 

She scans the card through, and the elevator doors open and Steve walks in with them. Bucky shrugs at his raised eyebrow, hitting nine floors above Darcy. 

“Whattup, Cap,” she says, saluting him with her card. 

He smiles. “How’s your head?” 

“Bashed in. The usual,” she says, shifting the weight of the papers around. “The doc wasn’t happy about letting me go early, but I was going crazy. Besides, I hit my head a lot as a kid, so I bounced back.” 

Bucky frowns at her. “Why’d you hit your head a lot?” 

“I ran before I could walk. I usually fell over,” she says. “If you could give me that stuff back, that’d be awesome, this is my stop.” 

The elevator glides to a halt, and Bucky shrugs at Steve. “See you up there. Won’t be a minute.” 

Darcy beams. “You’re carrying my stuff for me? God, you’re a babe. See you, Stevie!” 

Steve waves, and Bucky pretends he doesn’t see that stupid smile on Steve’s face that means he’s proud of Bucky for voluntarily going to a new floor on his own, and the door shuts on him and Bucky follows Darcy. 

Even walking next to her, he takes in how her converses are battered to the point where she needs a new pair, the way she adjusts her glasses and presses her bright red lips together. There’s a maze of corridors, but their path is pretty simple. Bucky hates the part of his head that’s meticulously piecing the layout of the place together, but he hasn’t figured out how to switch that part of his brain off yet. 

Darcy’s taking her time. “Normally I don’t carry this much stuff, see, but Jane needed everything Tony has on particle nucleolus and for some reason it’s all handwritten.” 

“Why didn’t you make two trips? You nearly dropped everything.” 

She wrinkles her nose. “The archivist hit on me.” 

There’s something about all this modern phrasing that’s violent. He knows what she means, but flirting shouldn’t be equivalent to punching. “You don’t like him?” 

She trades the brunt of the weight from one arm to the other, and she has red lines across her forearms where it dug in. Bucky steals another chunk of papers, and she flashes him a grateful smile. 

“He’s married. He’s nearly fifty. His breath smells like old pizza.” Drawing up outside Laboratory 93-9, she punches in a code Bucky memorizes before he can stop himself. “Jane! You eaten that sandwich yet?” 

Jane stuffs it in her mouth. “Yuff.” 

She sidesteps and leans in to Bucky. Her perfume smells like sweets. “This is the babysitter portion of the job.” 

He holds back a smile, then holds up the papers. “Where do you-?” 

“Pick a desk, dump ‘em.” 

He puts them down neatly where Darcy lets them falls where they may. Janes brushes off her hands on her skirt, standing up and swallowing her mouthful. 

“Nice to meet you,” she says, reaching out to shake his hand. She has a firm grip. “I hear you saved Darcy.” 

“I kept her company until the doctors showed up,” he says, but he doesn’t deny it entirely, because he’s pretty sure he’d get another ‘don’t minimize the good you do’ speech. 

“I appreciate it,” she says, nodding. “Although if she’d _got off on the right floor_ , it wouldn’t have happened-” 

A pen flew past Bucky’s ear, and Jane only just ducked in time to miss it. 

“There are eight floors of labs in this building. My bad, I chose the wrong sodding one!” 

Bucky leans out of the way of Darcy’s next missile- a protractor. 

“You’ve got good aim.” 

“Only when I’m provoked,” Darcy says, eyes narrowed at Jane. 

Jane holds up her hands in defeat, and goes back to picking at her sandwich and through the folders they brought up. 

Papers everywhere, chemicals bubbling and equipment on the benches, missing the flash of bright blue next to the clock is impossible. Bucky wanders over, and Darcy chases after him. 

“Hey, no, you’ve got your own Captain America, that’s mine-” 

He picks it up. It’s exaggerated and cartoonish- the head’s twice the size of the body, and it’s cute in the grotesque kind of way this generation like. Darcy jumps up, swiping her arm over his shoulder and plucking it out of his hands. He’s aware her fingers touch his shoulder and she releases a little grunt with the force of stretching for it. 

Both arms wrap around the toy, pulled in tightly to her chest, and she glares at him. “Mine.” 

“He’s even got a shield.” 

“Mine.” 

He grins, and backs off. “Understood.” 

Hopping up onto a desk, she arranges the Captain America to sit next to her. “Do you think he’d find it weird?” 

The standard, fan-pleasing answer of ‘of course not’ nearly slips out, but she’s been honest with him. She doesn’t seem like she’d consider anything else. 

“He hated the attention of it all, in the end. I think that’s what he doesn’t like about-” he gestures to the toy “-things like that.” 

“I won’t tell him, then.” 

“Darcy, have you changed the settings on this?” Jane’s scowling at a microscope. 

“Nope. Should I have?” 

Bucky nods. “I need to head up, I’ll leave you to it.” 

“Wait.” Hopping down, Darcy is in his way. She pulls something out of her pocket, scribbles something, and offers it to him. “If you need someone, for- well, whatever, for a hug or to listen to you for three hours, let me know.” 

On a dirty piece of card, she’s written her number and a smiley face. He takes it. 

“Thank you.” 

She smiles at him, hesitates, then marches over to Jane. “Woman, eat your fucking food-” 

He pockets it, but later puts it in a desk drawer in his rooms and tries to forget about her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honesty time: my mate (hugbubble, go check out hers adorbs oneshots) told me the Darcy/Bucky fandom was like, the best. and I was like... hmm. alright. don't believe you, but alright.  
> you guys are so awesome I promise to get this story finished. I /promise/. the response to this has been overwhelming. thank you.

It isn’t bad. It isn’t his worst. It’s not much of anything, not compared to the slaughter he remembers, the bombs and machine guns and the rooms full of people.

She was just a daughter coming to see her aging father at the wrong moment. Witnesses aren’t allowed, so he eliminated her too, and stepped over her body, and left. At the time he hadn’t thought much of it, but now. Thirty-something, cropped blonde hair, trainers and a sports bottle in hand. She’d been on the phone to someone when he shot her, the tinny voice asking qui’est-il arrive? Adrienne? Pouvez-vou-

He wakes up, sits up, and can’t shake Adrienne off.

Steve’s already left to relieve Natasha of sitting at the freeway, waiting for a HYDRA agent to potentially pass them or not. The shipment of missiles the cops intercepted raised a series of questions- including, but not limited to ‘where are they coming from?’ and ‘where are they going?’. JARVIS tells him Steve left at 4am. Natasha is better off working the HYDRA operative they caught, anyway, than sat in a car pulled up at the side of a freeway anyway, but Bucky’s left without a place to go. Stark could distract but his talking mostly filters through as white noise anyway.

JARVIS mentions that Darcy arrives in the lab usually at nine, even though he’s unprompted, and Bucky forces himself to get dressed. He raps on the glass at quarter past.

She skips over, admitting him, but he doesn’t step over the threshold. The papers they brought up are spread around Jane, in piles on every surface available. He glances away from her curious gaze.

Darcy stands slightly to the left, blocking Jane’s view. “How’re you doing?”

“That-” He struggles, and swallows. “That talk. Can we talk?”

She bites her lip, and she’s studying the bags under his eyes, his exhaustion. She turns to Jane, grabbing her jacket.

“Hey, bosslady, I’m taking that lunch break you never gave me yesterday.”

“I let you go an hour early-”

“Blah blah blah can’t hear you, see you whenever I want to come back, byeee.” She shuts the door, and eases her hair trapped under her jacket. “Coffee?”

She doesn’t even consider going to that Starbucks everyone talks about, instead leading him to one of the communal kitchens and asking JARVIS to tell everyone it’s out of use for today. He takes his black, and she only sprinkles sugar in hers.

“So,” she says, flopping down on a plush armchair and curling up around her coffee. He sits opposite her. “Any topic in particular?”

He clears his throat. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Fire away,” she says, sipping. It’s as though nothing phases her.

Adrienne’s lips, parted in shock and still that way in death, are just out of reach. He steps over her.

“You- you don’t flinch away from me. Or this.” He holds up his arm, and he knows it scares even though he always wears long sleeves. “You don’t seem… afraid.”

She doesn’t say anything, watching and waiting.

“Are you?”

“Scared? No.”

It’s his turn to wait.

She sighs, leaning in. “Look, I know… I mean, it’s in the agreement when you work in here. Hulk works here sometimes, so they pay our health insurance. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that you’ll hurt someone- is it?”

He shakes his head.

“But I’m not _scared_. I’m pretty sure you’re not malicious or apathetic or whatever. Your brain doesn’t cooperate sometimes, that’s not- it’s not your fault. So I’m not scared.”

She’s not like Natasha, subtle to the point where everything could be a lie. Her hands are still, curled around her mug- nails bitten right down, he notices- but her eyes never stop moving, searching the room and his face for the exact phrasing of what she wants to say. 

He sees a shrink, once a week. She’s said it’s normal to resent the people who are afraid of him (he knows she was afraid of him for the first three months, her finger hovering over a silent alarm every session), but he doesn’t. He doesn’t blame them an inch. Steve’s not afraid, but he’s the exception because he heals as fast as he bleeds and he can fight back.

Darcy is an anomaly, and he doesn’t understand her.

“You really believe I won’t hurt you?” 

She scrunches up her nose. “If I threw a punch your way, you’d have time between me throwing it and you blocking it to laugh it would be that slow. I'm pretty sure I'm not threatening.”

Bucky can’t hold back his smile. “I could teach you, if you wanted.”

“I did jujitsu as a kid. The instructor quietly asked my mom to make me leave. I won’t subject you to that.”

He relaxes, eyes roving over her. “I don’t know whether to believe your stories.”

“The mascot story was true, wasn’t it?” She leans in face smug, as though daring him to believe her, daring him to not to.

“The more I think about that thing the more I want to bring it up with Steve.”

“You promised-”

“I know. I keep my promises.”

She slumps in her seat, smirking to herself. “I suppose if Thor respects my threats to keep quiet, there’s no way you won’t.”

He raises an eyebrow. Thor’s pretty gentle, and humble, and he doesn’t have the stomach for brutality. Not like Bucky. “What makes you think that?”

“You’ve got a- cybernetic? Bionic? Metal?- arm. He’s a God. A literal God. He’d beat you in a fight, but he’s scared of me. Therefore, it follows that you’ll toe the line with me too.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “I’m not scared of you.”

“Right back at you.”

Shaking his head, he looks away. She’s biting back a smile, and asks him about adjusting to modern life, and they sit there for an hour, then two, and Darcy admits she has to go back to work. He walks her there. He isn’t sure how to say thank you, her chatter filling the spaces he wants to say it in.

“Anyway, see you later, yeah?” she says, and she only closes the door when he nods, waggling her fingers at him from the other side of the glass. He waves back and bites the inside of his lip to stop himself smiling.

***

Upstairs, he finds the card with her number and programmes it into his phone. He texts her while he walks, and JARVIS admits him to Stark’s lab.

Natasha’s draped across the couch, eyes closed and breathing steady.

“Danbury,” she reports back, flat. “North-west.”

“JARVIS?” Tony says, and the screen he’s looking at pulls up a map of the area. Tony leans in, but JARVIS is already speaking.

“Sir, it appears that there is a building off the 84, near where Miss Romanoff is describing. It’s registered as unoccupied, but satellite pictures from the last six months show vehicles visiting the location.”

“Bring it up.”

Bucky shuts the door behind him; Natasha doesn’t twitch. “Does it have a red pickup truck outside it? Orlando registration plate?”

“Street cameras confirm a vehicle of that description nearby.”

“It’s the only one the operative remembers.” Her voice is softer around the edges than normal. “She thinks the missiles are coming in to New York, but she doesn’t know.”

“Does know, or doesn’t want to share?”

“She doesn’t know,” Natasha breathes out. Tony wouldn’t have heard it, even if he did pay attention.

“It took you two days to break her, maybe you’re losing your touch.” Tony’s grinning, pulling up the history of the house.

Bucky rests against the armrest at her feet. “It took seventy years to break me. Two _months_ would be up there.”

At first, the only indication she hears is her frown. Her eyes stay closed. “You never broke.”

There’s something quiet in Natasha he likes. She trusts Steve, because Steve is worth trusting, but she’ll never quite align herself with any one person. He used to suspect it was a survival mechanism. On watching her, he thinks she might just be doing what she thinks is right.

Tony clears his throat. “So. When should we raid it?”

“Raiding it would be a risk,” Natasha says, face smooth again.

“Look, she said there weren’t many people there-”

“Tony, that base is part of a chain. If the bases’ entire purpose is shaped around the missiles and we take out a link, HYDRA is going to notice. It might trigger their plans early.”

“It might not.”

“Until we know more, we can’t take that risk.”

“Sure we can!”

“We can’t,” Natasha says, and her patience is endless. “We’ve already taken one of their missiles. They think it’s in FBI custody.”

“-the FBI think it’s in FBI custody-”

“-but that’s not enough to guarantee we don’t know something, in their eyes. Raiding the place might kill hundreds of people.”

Tony turns to Bucky. “C’mon, you’re fuzzy with Captain Brash. We need to go in.”

Bucky sighs. “We don’t even know whose lives we’d be endangering.”

Natasha’s lips turn upwards, but Tony glares at him.

“Oh, sure, you’ll kill Zia-al-Huq in ‘88, but _goodness gracious_ let’s not risk something that _might not even happen_ -”

Arm resting over her eyes, Natasha huffs out a breath. “Tony, did you read my SHIELD file?”

Tony’s blindsided. “Yeah.”

“So you know about Osaka.”

Her statement hangs in the air, her past as visible as Bucky’s, but she doesn’t react. Bucky stares at the ground, resigned to quiet. Tony knocks the awkwardness aside.

“Look, we can’t risk any more missiles coming into New York.”

“I know. But I think provoking them at this stage would be more of a risk. They’re prone to reckless and vicious attacks now.”

Tony shoves aside the map and throws his hands up in the air, ordering JARVIS to pull up all the speed/security camera footage and track the vehicle to search for patterns in behaviour and routes. Natasha pokes Bucky with her foot, and he taps it once.

The door opens, and shoulders slumped, Steve clicks the door locked behind him. He asks Tony why he’s been called back, surely the road still needs monitoring, and Tony starts babbling. Bucky’s phone buzzes.

_Thanks for your number :)_

_Thank you for yours._

_You’re welcome. I have a question._

_We just talked._

_Yup :) so, what does an average supersoldier day look like?_

Glancing up, Tony hasn’t finished but Steve’s dismissing any attacks without more information. Tony’s readying himself for a fight.

Natasha’s breathing slowed. She’s fallen asleep.

There is no average.

A picture comes through. Jane’s glaring at a computer, scratching her head, but in the foreground Darcy’s grinning and pointing at Jane, arm outstretched to take the picture. _This is your average science day._

_Ooh, thrilling._

_We’re getting very excited about stars over here. Don’t harsh on our vibe._

_Whoops._

_:P_

He locks his phone and slides it back in his pocket. Tony’s switched his argument to insisting that the HYDRA agent must know more than she’s saying. Steve has faith in Natasha’s skills, and Bucky would never begrudge him that, but Bucky knows HYDRA.

“Let me talk to her.”

Steve turns to Bucky, biting his lip. “Bucky, I don’t want-”

“It took her two days because we don’t hurt people in our custody,” Tony says. “Generally. You know that, don’t you?”

Bucky considers Tony. He’s not going to let him either way, so Bucky shrugs. “It’d work.”

Steve balks, and Tony glares again. Bucky turns on his heel and leaves, and as he heads for the elevators, he tells JARVIS his plan.

JARVIS clears his path, and assures him he will have a three minute head start. It’s enough to find her cell and punch in the code JARVIS sends to his phone, but the moment the door slides open alarms blare.

He steps through, and the door locks behind him. She scrambles to her feet, wiry and tall. 

“The Winter Soldier.” Her eyes set on his arm, but they slide up to his face. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

Holding her gaze, barely blinking, he tightens his hands into fists, and she falters, seeing it.

“You won’t hurt me. You’re deprogrammed.”

An almighty crash throbs through the door, but it holds up against Steve’s shield.

“Bucky, open up-”

Tony’s furious. “I will fry your circuitry and melt your arm for scrap, what the hell-”

His blast bounces off the door.

Fear stirs in her. He sees it; her lips part.

“JARVIS, door lock override!”

“Sir, something malfunctioned-”

“Overrides don’t malfunction!”

“The door is jammed, sir. I can’t open it.” 

Bucky tunes out the shouting, and he considers her. He fixes just below her ribs. His metal hand could reach in and pierce her liver. He doesn’t need a knife- he’s done it before. It wouldn’t be clean, but she’d die slowly. That’s what they need. 

“Romanova didn’t hurt me.”

He tilts his head at her, because she intends to mean something with that, but it wouldn’t mean anything to the Winter Soldier.

It’s a risk, but he steps towards her. She backs up. Good.

“I don’t know anything else.”

He leers. Heart rate elevated, breathing higher, her body is responding to the need to fight, but she can’t fight him. She’s seen the footage of him against Captain America, he’s sure of it. She won’t even try.

“Is she hurt?”

“Not yet, Captain, but-”

“BARNES, I swear to God-”

They’re horrified, desperate- she’s backed up as much as she can. He takes three more steps towards her, and he raises his arm because he’s standing right over her-

She collapses, the only direction to shrink further away from him is down and her knees curl to her chest. “I don’t know where the missiles are coming from, _please_ , I don’t-”

“Danbury.”

“It’s a storage facility,” she gasps. “A secondary records room after Zola’s programme, they use different routes into the city every time, Danbury’s one of them, please, _please_ -”

Bucky steps back, and she sobs.

JARVIS’ voice is clear inside and outside the room. “Sir, calm yourself. It was never the Sergeant’s intention to hurt the agent inside.”

The banging stops.

“Agent Garroway-” she curls up tighter “-the Sergeant explained that to me on his way here. He only intended to scare you. I was monitoring the situation the entire time to ensure your safety.”

Door sliding open, Steve’s fingers are bleeding from trying to drag the door open and Tony’s wearing the glove of the Iron Man suit. Bucky holds his wrist up to the latter.

“One of yours, right?” It’s a bracelet that functions the opposite of a Black Widow bite, shocking the wearer. JARVIS linked to his, and it clicks unlocked. He hands it back to Stark. “Swiped it on the way out.”

Steve stumbles back against the wall, staring up. “ _Jesus_ , Buck.”

“The main function of that base is records. We should attack it,” Bucky says, and Tony doesn’t know whether to look pleased, but Bucky doesn’t want a reaction. He asks JARVIS to lock the door again. HYDRA agents are tougher than that, she’ll recover sooner than they’d like.

Tony narrows his eyes. “You got JARVIS to lie to me.”

“Actually, sir, I volunteered. Sergeant Barnes only asked me to keep his plan quiet.”

Tony chucks the bracelet at Steve’s head and storms off. Bucky catches it before it hits him.

“I thought-”

“So did she,” Bucky says, shrugging. The relief wears from Steve’s face, and it won’t surprise Bucky if grief replaces it. “I was counting on it.”

“On her?”

“All of you. Figured a little performance on your end would add to the pressure, and I didn’t need to say much. It made it more convincing.”

Steve nods, and exhales again. “Okay.”

Another day, he’ll get hell for it.

***

They gear up that night, stealing away in the dark in a helicarrier. Steve grabs his phone off the seat between them the sixth time it buzzes and he ignores it.

“Darcy Lewis texted you.”

Bucky doesn’t look up from checking the 10mm auto’s magazine. It’s full, so he shoves it in his holster. “She does that.”

“What’s your PIN?”

“Like I’m telling you.”

“What’d she say?”

“If you didn’t have my phone, I might know.”

Steve tosses it back at him, and he snatches it out of the air.

The first asks him if he’s around the next day, the next three are meant to annoy him into answering, the fifth her realisation he’s busy on something important, and the last offers him luck, ending with a smiley face.

He sends her one back, thanking her, and switches the phone off. Steve stands, rocking slightly in the helicarrier’s wake, and wears his shield on his back. Bucky checks his two Glocks, throwing knives and throws his rifle over his shoulder.

“So?”

“She says don’t get killed.”

“You told someone you’re on mission?” Steve’s frowning, because he’s worrying, because when isn’t he worrying. “Isn’t she a civilian?”

“I didn’t tell her,” Bucky says, shrugging. “I think she’s just smart.”

Natasha throws words over her shoulder. “We’re cleared for landing, Rogers.”

Steve slides his helmet on, raising his eyebrows at Bucky and clicking his coms on. Somewhere, Hawkeye, Stark and Wanda are listening. “You all know the plan. In and out, as fast and quiet as possible.”

***

The drive Natasha took to upload the files onto is empty when they return, but their hands are full of boxes they pile into one of Stark’s offices.

“Who even _uses_ paper anymore?” he says, glaring at their mounting collection of work.

“Assholes,” Bucky grunts, dumping the last four on the table.

Stark pats him on the back. “I could like this guy.”

Sighing, Natasha drags a box towards her, pulling out a handful of paper. 

Steve nods. “I’ll join you.”

He doesn’t say anything, but Bucky tugs his bulletproof vest over his head, dropping his gloves and holsters and weapons in the corner, and the rest clear off to take a shower.

He’d been long-distance, sniping over the Avenger’s shoulders at escapees from the building opposite, so he’s clean aside from mud. Steve has a scuff across his ribs from a bullet Bucky shot, but it’s more a scratch it quit bleeding so quick, and he’d wiped most of the blood away. Bucky didn’t begrudge himself it. The shot stopped a HYDRA agent burying a knife in Steve’s heart.

Perusing the files, all they need are coordinates, any kind of indication of origin of the missiles. Natasha’s already warned them they might be embedded in code or referenced a dozen times without explicit details given, so Bucky slumps in the seat next to her, skim-reading so as to not exhaust himself. They’re in this for the long haul. 

“That was a good shot, by the way.” She keeps her eyes on the file she’s reading, voice soft, but she’s talking to him.

“I figured I’d save you the trouble of flooring him.”

Natasha half-smiles, and Steve puts his feet up on the table, sinking into the seat as though preparing to become one with it until he finds what he needs, but it’s Natasha who flips through the fastest, picking up on the smallest details.

Bucky’s phone buzzes, and they all look at it before he can slap it quiet. “Sorry.”

_Everyone okay?_

_All good. Just doing paperwork now._

_You guys lead such glamorous lives :P_

_Shouldn’t you be in bed?_

_Dude, I AM in bed. I figured I’d pick up a text in the morning. Make sure you get lots of sleep, k?_

He smiles. _Sure._

_Sweet dreams!x_

Phone down, he retreats back into the file and he’s as determined as Steve. Neither of them feel sleep deprivation the way normal people do, and they’ll be damned if they don’t claw everything they can out of what the serum gave them. Wanda comes in with hot drinks and pretzels at 2am, and Steve insists Natasha leave to sleep properly when she does even though Natasha hasn’t yawned once. She concedes, but she returns at 5am as they’re clearing up the last box. Their pile of useful papers is as tall as one of their takeout coffee cups, and Natasha whips them away to scan them into JARVIS and the rest head to bed. Bucky passes out when his head hits the pillow.

***

He rolls out of bed at three in the afternoon, when the rest of them seem to have been up for hours. The files have a trail that’s nearly impossible to follow, but they’re all past that. Steve and Tony are arguing over whether or not bringing Bucky into closer combat is a good idea.

“-yesterday he had to shoot you to save your ass,” Tony says. “We need him on the team, I’ve seen him fight.”

“You don’t trust him to watch your back-”

“I trust him to watch yours. At least three people at any one time need to do that, you make ridiculous choices.”

“Can I say something?”

Steve looks at Bucky, waiting for him to speak. Tony answers. “No.”

Bucky puts his hands up, sitting and watching them.

“He deserves a choice-”

“He’s more valuable in the field than on the edge of it, and he knows it. Why don’t you? Did they forget to melt the ice in your brain?”

Steve shakes his head. “He’s always been a sniper-”

“I haven’t.” Bucky sighs. However much he hates it, he was an assassin with a set of skills that could be an asset to the right side of the fight. “Look, I think Stark’s right. Clint hits what I can with arrows, and he could probably do it blindfolded too.”

Stark’s beaming. “Done.”

“No, _not_ done Tony, we need to talk about this-”

“Captain Worrypants, he’s decided.”

Steve looks like he’s about to retch, but he swallows his retort, looks Bucky in the eye, and nods. “If you die I’ll be pissed.”

“If I die I’ll be pissed. I only just got my brain back.”

Pulling a face, Tony flaps his hands at them. “If you’re going to kiss, do it in the corridor. You’ll make Dum-E throw up motor oil.”

The robot perks up, looking around for something to knock over, and Bucky rolls his eyes. He’s not sure if the robot is an AI like JARVIS or if Tony installed a more complicated than necessary set of programmes into it, but either way it reminds him of a real person and it weirds him out. Mostly because he finds the thing a little bit cute.

Tony snaps his fingers in their direction, eyes on a screen. “On second thoughts, kiss later. Do you think that could be…?”

Leaning in, Steve frowns. “Can you use that cell phone number?”

“Assuming it’s turned on… JARVIS, hack it.”

They watch as every piece of data is downloaded. Photos, texts, numbers called, the current location of the phone. Tony glares at the information, flicking through it.

“Burner phone, burner phone, burner phone… oh, and a payphone right outside Danbury. Not useful.” There aren’t any photos, and the text messages are vague and cryptic.

“Have Natasha look at those when she gets down here.”

“Is she _still_ asleep?” Tony says, throwing his hands up in the air.

“She went to bed six hours ago, sir. By my calculations, she has not slept a full night’s sleep in six days, sleeping at a median rate of 3 and a half hours per rest. She may sleep for another six hours yet.”

Tony doesn’t comment, because then Steve will make a suggestion Tony himself go to bed and they’ll get in another argument.

Steve mentions one of the files has iffy validity, but Tony shrugs it off. He's got the entirety of the SHIELD info dump in his records' room, so Bucky volunteers himself to go down to the records room and find it to corroborate or disprove the file. It should've taken five minutes.

A security guard intercepts him on his way back across the lobby. At first, he's not sure what the guard's talking about, and then Bucky stares at middle space, taking a step back when the guard steps forward.

He wants to put his hands over his ears. It's not true. It's not.

Looking around the lobby, he catches Darcy's eye- she's about to step into an elevator, but she falters at his expression. He looks back at the ground too late.

Darcy strides across the lobby, flicking her hair over her shoulder and standing between them. She smiles brightly at Bucky.

“Hey dude, what’s up? Listen, I got this thing in the lab, and I really need your help-” she glances at the security guard “-heavy lifting, y’know the drill- so I was wondering if you could come up for like ten minutes and help me out?”

Bucky opens his mouth, but the security guard cuts him off. “I’m afraid he won’t be able to help you, darling, so why don’t you-”

“Firstly, you can call me Miss Lewis.”

He crosses his arms. “Alright, _Miss Lewis_ , why don’t you mind your own business and go?”

“I’ll decide what is or is not my business. What’s the problem?”

“Why don’t you step inside-”

“I’ll ask once more. What’s the problem?”

“He shouldn’t be in the building.”

“He lives here! Who gave that order?” Darcy says, taken aback. Bucky knows where this conversation is going, and he tries to zone out of it. “And why?”

“He’s a threat to the security and integrity of this operation.” He puts his hand on her shoulder to steer her away, and Bucky starts towards them but she beats him to it, lurching out of the guard's grip.

“Touch me again and you’ll have to justify it to your supervisor.” Darcy glowers at him, and Bucky forces himself to relax his fists. “In fact, scratch that. I want to talk to him about his bullshit orders. Call him, now.”

“Darcy, I really think you should go,” Bucky says, quiet. It doesn’t escape him that she oriented herself between them.

“I really don’t,” she says, ignoring him.

“Actually, it wasn’t an order my supervisor gave. I made that decision,” the guard says, chest puffing up, as though making himself bigger than all 5ft 2 of Darcy is impressive.

“That he’s a threat?” 

“He endangers the lives of everyone here.”

“Explain.”

“Look, he’s a HYDRA operated assassin, an unhinged murderer. He could kill anyone in this building at any minute. How can I justify letting him in anymore?” he says, sneering at Bucky.

Darcy presses her fingers to her temples. “Did you actually just say that.”

“Come on, you know he’s mental, he’s a psychopath, he shouldn’t be allowed near normal people-”

“Do you know what I think?”

Darcy looks so angry she could hit the guard, talking faster than she normally does. Bucky braces himself to drag her back. He reaches forwards, fingers holding the hem of her t-shirt.

“What do you think, Miss Lewis?”

She stares into his eyes as she says it. “I think you saw him walking alone and found your chance to target him. I bet you’ve been wanting to take on the _Winter Soldier_ ever since you got here, make a name for yourself. I bet you might even believe he’s dangerous, but I’m not a forgiving person,” she says. Pulling out her phone, she scrolls through the contacts and makes a call. “Steve? Get down to the lobby. Bucky needs you.”

Bucky feels blindsided. Has she really just done that? 

“You fucked up,” she tells the guard, who doesn't seem to know what she’s done but she doesn't bother to explain, turning away from him and backing Bucky up several feet.

“Darcy-” 

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She doesn’t say anything more, sliding her hand into his metal one and squeezing tight. He doesn’t know if she knows he can feel it, but he can. She's shaking.

A minute later, Steve sprints out of an elevator, eyes finding them and searching both of them.

“Buck, are you-” 

Darcy lets Bucky’s hand go and steers Steve towards the security guard.

“Hi,” she said, fake smile plastered across her face, “remember me? I’d like you to repeat everything you said about Sergeant Barnes to Captain America, please.”

A sheet of paper could claim to have a more natural tanned glow than the guard.

Steve glances back to Bucky. He's still a little shocked, and doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. The grim line of Darcy’s mouth, the hatred that pours out of her as she dares the guard to open his mouth, tells Steve enough. 

“I- I-”

“I think you said something about him being an ‘unhinged murderer’ who isn’t allowed in the building anymore because you couldn’t ‘justify’ it,” she says. “That he’s ‘mental’, and shouldn’t be allowed near normal people. Am I getting that right?”

Steve’s jaw drops.

Bucky watches Darcy. She moves as though she were going to come back to him, but turns back on herself, demanding the guard admit what he did.

“Did you say that or not?” she says. “Tell him.”

“I didn’t say it like that, Captain-”

“You called him a psychopath.”

Steve hands curl into fists. Darcy steps forward and rips the guard’s ID badge off.

“I’d suggest verbal abuse of a war veteran would necessitate immediate dismissal,” she said, slapping his badge into Steve’s chest. He takes it, locking onto the guard’s face.

She walks with Bucky to the elevator. Bucky's amazed they don’t hear the guard’s nose getting broken. 

The elevator doors shut, and as they start their ascent, Darcy stands in front of Bucky and embraces him, pressing herself into him and pulling him closer, her head resting on his chest. His hold is light.

She shakes her head, her voice choked and thick. “He’s wrong about you.”

Bucky’s eyes close, relaxing into her grip, burying his face in her hair. He doesn’t know why she cares so much, but he doesn’t want to know. He backs her up a step to clear their access to the private floors, breathing her in, holding her tighter than he holds anyone. If he's hurting her, she doesn’t complain, only letting go when he does and following him out into the spacious hallway. Darcy pulls out her phone again.

“Jane? I’m sick.”

“ _I saw you ten minutes ago, Darcy_.”

“I’ve got the flu.” She coughs.

“ _Darcy_ …”

“I’m taking a sick day. I haven’t been ill in like, two years.”

Jane huffs. “ _Fine. But I want the explanation tomorrow_.”

“You don’t need me today anyway. But remember to eat lunch.”

“ _Hmm_.”

“Bye!”

“ _Bye, Darcy_.”

“You gotta cover for me,” she tells him, hanging up.

“I can manage that.”

“You better. Now, what was on today’s agenda?”

It's a lot of boring-but-important strategy discussion, of which Darcy is not supposed to be privy to. JARVIS makes her agree to a verbal contract before Steve, Tony and Bucky start talking.

They discuss the possible integration of Bucky into their battlefield tactics, Darcy busying herself with their coffee orders. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches her wander over to the bookshelf, pick a book at random and tuck it under her elbow.

“Why is she here?” Tony asks as she put his coffee in front of him. “I don’t remember asking for a secretary.”

“Um, I’m here for Bucky. Who are you?”

For a moment, Tony's dumbstruck- he believes her question was honest- and she splits into a grin. 

Bucky points at her. “That’s why she’s here.”

“I’m the comic relief,” she agrees. “You’re not very funny.”

“I’m rich.” 

“You remember that woman you blew up the other week? That was me.”

“I pay your wages.”

“You don’t, I’m privately hired.”

“JARVIS, do we pay her wages?”

“Sir, Miss Lewis is paid privately.”

Darcy shrugs at Tony, who turns back to Steve. “Can you get rid of her?”

“I got one of the security team fired this morning,” she said, chewing on a bagel. “I’m scary. They won’t help you.”

Tony narrows his eyes. She flips open the book, knees pulled to her chest on a squishy chair in the corner, and ignores him.

***

Tony didn’t kick her out, but only because Steve and Bucky managed to keep their faces straight most of the time. At lunch, they call the meeting to a halt- it seems a bit of headache, trying to un-complicate a lot of complicated PR issues- because Tony wants to disappear to do some ‘fun stuff’, which probably means making more unstable explosives. Steve leaves to ‘check on something’ (meaningful looks were exchanged with Bucky) somewhere else, and Darcy follows Bucky into a living area.

“So, what do you do for fun?” she says, flopping onto the sofa.

“Besides existential worry?” he says, sitting next to her.

She pauses, thinking. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure that counts as a hobby, though.”

“Crossword puzzles. I have to look up most of it on the internet, but it’s helping me learn about the 21st century.”

Darcy smiles. “That’s a really cool idea. I’m more of a Sudoku person myself.”

“That figures.”

She tilts her head, and he shrugs.

“Numbers, right? You’re a scientist.”

She chews a hangnail. “I never put that together. Huh.”

“I like movies, too.”

“Which ones?”

Bucky smiles, a little bitterly. “From before.”

She bites her lip, glancing down. If she’d existed in 1939, if she was this person then, Bucky would’ve asked if she had a friend for Steve.

Darcy turns the tv on, neither of them really watching it, but it's good background noise. Steve taps Bucky on the shoulder, talking in low voices at the door with him.

“I can go, if you guys are busy-”

Bucky shakes his head at her. “This won’t take long.”

Steve stays, to keep her company. Downstairs, Bucky assures the Head of Security he wouldn’t be filing charges for harassment (he isn’t exactly sure what harassment is or why the guy looks so scared, but he pretends to), but on no uncertain terms if it happens again Steve wouldn’t let him be this lenient. 

He comes back up, and he can’t hear the sound of the tv anymore because they're talking. He slows his steps, creeping up to the open door, peering around it. Sat at either end of the sofa, they're talking.

“It didn’t really hit him for a while. He was in shock, he kept getting new memories… it took a while before he really understood everything he did.”

Darcy peels an orange, eating it segment by segment, watching Steve. “And when he did?”

“He didn’t get out of bed for two weeks.”

Darcy blows hair out of her face, eyes tight. “How’d you get him moving again?”

“I didn’t,” Steve says, shrugging. “I basically made him eat, but that was it. I’d sit in his room with him and play movies and listen to music in the background, so he’d know he wasn’t alone, but he didn’t want to talk and I didn’t want to push him. One day he just got out of bed, made himself food, and watched the tv with me.”

Swallowing, Darcy tries to smile. “He didn’t want to give up.”

“I think he just didn’t want them to win.”

At that, she laughs through her tears. “Yeah- I mean, ‘fuck you’ is as good a reason as any. Sorry, for-” she gestures to her face, “-this.”

Steve doesn’t even answer her, just waves her away. He’s done his crying. “Thank you, by the way.”

“For what?”

“Being something new, in his life. Something good.”

“I think that’s- pushing the truth, a little bit. I’m not-”

Bucky moves around the corner, leaning against the doorframe, watching them. They both jump when he starts talking. “What was it you said to me, Darce? ‘Don’t minimize the good you do’?”

Darcy swivels back to Steve, glaring at him. “How long has he been there?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “He was a spy and assassin. All I’ve ever been is a soldier. I’ve _no_ idea.”

“How long have you been there?”

He taps the side of his nose, and she throws a piece of orange skin at him. He doesn’t bother ducking her aim's so off- it splats on the wall behind him.

“I’ll have you know my contacts are playing up,” she says, wiping the last of her tears away.

“You’re wearing your glasses,” he says, plopping into an armchair.

She doesn’t even blink. “ _Yeah_ … did you guys not do that in the forties? Glasses and contact lenses? Your vision’s twice as good. God, you’re both so old.”

“JARVIS, is she telling the truth?” Bucky says, eyebrows raised in challenge. 

“I believe that Miss Lewis-”

“C’mon, JARVIS, buddy. Help a girl out.”

“Miss Lewis would prefer if I didn’t answer that question, Sergeant Barnes.”

“You tried.”

“I hate super soldiers,” she says, pouting. “One of them makes me cry and the other one teases me about it. You both suck.”

Bucky offers her a tissue, but Darcy takes the one Steve holds out, sticking her tongue out at Bucky.

“He’s nicer than you are.”

“Aw, hell. How long is this gonna last?”

Steve weighs up Darcy’s frown, how violently she scrunches up the tissue and her folded arms. “A week?”

“At least a month,” Darcy says.

Sticking his leg out, Bucky nudges her with his foot. “You’ll never hold it that long.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’m one of your favourite people.”

Darcy wrinkles her nose. Steve laughs.

“C’mon, Darcy.” He pokes her again. “I’ll even apologize.”

“Go on then.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, voice deadpan. “I am sorry I made fun of you for crying. You’re a sensitive soul and I shouldn’t have forgotten that.”

“And?”

“And…”

“And you’ll never…”

“And I’ll never do it again? Darcy, that’s my final hobby. Existential crisis’, crosswords and taking the mick outta you. You can’t ask me to give up that.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Fine. But as soon as you get another hobby, drop that one off the list.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: I do portray an anxiety attack in this chapter.

More than anything, it’s the surprise. At eleven at night, Bucky doesn’t expect too many people wanting to make themselves food, and he keeps the noise to a minimum because- well, he doesn’t know, really. Maybe all those nights spent camped in Nazi territory, or being an assassin for so long, or because he didn’t want to wake anyone up. It’s one of them.

His stillness means that when he feels breathing down his neck, he just acts.

The knife he used to chop parsley stabs cleanly in the junction below the shoulder and collarbone. He yanks it back out, ready to stab again, but Steve staggers backwards and holds a hand up in surrender, the other pressing against the wound.

“Bucky, Bucky, it’s-”

“ _Shit_ ,” he says, dropping the knife. “Shit, Steve, I’m sorry-”

“Are you alright?”

“Me?” Bucky glares at him, grabbing a towel and packing it into the wound, ignoring Steve’s groan. “Why the hell are you asking me if I’m okay? I just stabbed you, you stupid punk.”

Steve winces, Bucky bracing his grip more firmly.

JARVIS’ soft voice came up. “There’s a doctor awake on the tenth floor, if you need stitches.”

“Yeah, thanks JARVIS,” Steve says, and they slowly made their way to the elevator.

Bucky keeps his eyes firmly on the towel, his palm flat on the wound, blood seeping between his fingers. They’d had their best run. Six weeks ago, Bucky knocked him out cold in sparring session because he’d lost focus and forgot they weren’t actually trying to kill each other.

It doesn’t seem like six weeks was enough, somehow.

By the time they get to the doctor, who seems to expect them, the bleeding has slowed, Bucky washing his hands while the doctor recommends stitches. Steve settles in, closing his eyes and forcing himself still while the doctor does her work.

Bucky finds his voice on the way out. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I didn’t know you were there, I just acted, I didn’t think-”

“Buck. Forget it. It’s fine.”

Bucky can’t even blame the arm. His left sometimes disconnects from his consciousness, acting on muscle memory and the training throughout the years, but he’d stabbed Steve with his right. It had just been him.

He’s tired of being afraid of himself. It’s too much work.

Back upstairs, the pan of water they’d left boiling has been turned off by JARVIS, and the knife and blood has been cleaned up. Draped over an armchair, Sam Wilson gave them a lazy salute as they walk in. “One day, I hope to walk in here and there not be a pool of blood on the floor.”

“I walked into a knife,” Steve shrugs, and Bucky tries not to resent how okay he was with being hurt. “How’s DC?”

“Boring as hell. Figured I’d come up and see if you found anything more about the missiles.”

Steve sighs, and Bucky bites his lip. The most frustrating part for Bucky is that it is a venture either outside his bracket of interests as the Winter Soldier, or it’s new, and either way he can give them no insight into it.

“We’re going to go on a raid in the next few days. We’ve found… fragments. References, mentions, but no concrete leads as of yet. Natasha traced some in the stockpile we found west, but not very far. “

Sam rolls his eyes. “I leave for three months and all you’ve done is get yourself stabbed. Well done.”

Bucky swallows, levelling his gaze at Sam. “Please keep that quiet.”

In response, Sam wrinkles his nose as though it hadn’t even been a question. “Anyway. I’ll be in town for a couple of days-”

“Could you stay longer? We could use another pair of eyes on this-”

Steve and Sam can talk all night, but Bucky isn’t hungry anymore, and he slips away to his rooms. He’s splashing water on his face when he notices specks of blood up his shirt and tears it off, throwing it at the laundry bag.

He grabs a black shirt out of his drawer, and goes to close it. His fingers hover, looking at the shirt. Dropping it back in, he chooses a white one. Black doesn’t show blood, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t make himself see what he’s spilled.

Dropping onto his bed, flicking the lamp off, he stares at the ceiling and runs his hands through his hair.

Three inches either way. The heart, the throat; Steve would be dead.

His bedside table buzzes with his phone. Hand feeling around he picks it up, and the bright screen hurts to look at.

_my date bailed early :( u up?_

He clicks in the box to respond, wonders what to say, and locks it.

Not telling her what happened would be irresponsible. She deserves to know. He pulls the sheets up, and holds on to the last few precious hours she doesn’t.

***

The next morning’s a Sunday, and Bucky has not been more grateful for a day of the week before. On Sundays, despite Tony and Jane’s numerous official complaints, the labs close down and lock up on Pepper’s orders.

Darcy doesn’t have a reason to set foot in the tower. He has one more day.

He answers her text- _Why did he bail?_ \- and turns on the tv, not really paying attention, pulling out a crossword and trying to focus on it.

She doesn’t answer. JARVIS prompts him to eat something, and he does, grabbing a bowl of cereal because anything that involved dangerous equipment he doesn’t want to risk picking up.

Turning to hurry back to his room, Natasha strolls in.

“Breakfast?” she asks, as though noon isn’t a strange time to eat it.

“Yeah,” he says. He starts towards the door.

“Steve’s fine, you know.”

He stops, but doesn’t turn back. “I’d have been told if he wasn’t.”

“I know you hate talking to me,” she says evenly, “but you don’t have to answer. Beating yourself up over it won’t change what you did. Learn from it. Be conscious of everything you do until it’s second nature to exercise caution, to think before acting.

“Or avoid everyone for three days then pretend it never happened. Your call.”

Taking the option she offers him, he says nothing and walks back to his room. He only eats the food in front of him because JARVIS reminds him to. When he’s done, he dresses and shaves and feels a helluva lot more human, and his phone rings, and it’s Darcy calling, and he picks up after a couple of rings.

He never did find out why she called him instead of Jane, but the truth is that Jane had said she and Thor were going to Asgard, and Bucky is the only other person she trusts with it.

“Hey, what’s up?” He can’t hear anything except heavy breathing. He frowns, listening closer. “Darcy?”

“’M-” she says, and it sounds like she’s crying, “my apartment.”

“What’s wrong?”

Gasping for breath, she can’t get her words out, and Bucky’s heart thumps in his chest. “I’m in- my apartment.”

“Okay, I’m coming for you, stay where you are,” he says, and he seems far calmer than he is, yanking his boots on and striding to the elevators. His phone buzzes, and he realises JARVIS has sent him directions. “I’ll be two minutes. What’s wrong?”

“I can’t- I can’t-” the phone thumps against something, and distant from the phone she sobs. “ _I can’t_ -”

“Darcy, I promise, I’m on my way, okay, just stay put, I’m coming-”

She hangs up, and Bucky shoulder-barges office workers waiting outside the elevator in the lobby but he doesn’t pause to say sorry.

Seven, eight, nine blocks, and he skids in front of the door, pocketing his phone. Her buildings’ security isn’t up to much- he picks the outside lock in seconds- and he sprints up the stairs two at a time until he reaches her floor.

The door’s ajar, and he creeps along the corridor to it, feet so light the floorboard doesn’t even creak. Through the gap, he hears a strangled gasp, and he knows that’s what people sound like with a hand closing around their throat. Taking a readying breath, shutting down the part of his brain that panics, he slams the door out of the way.

Knees to chest, she’s curled up in the hallway, rocking slightly, staring ahead.

There was no sign of intrusion on first glance, so he drops in front of her. No blood, no limbs at strange angles, she’s pale- he puts a hand on her leg. He doesn’t even see it happen, she smacks his hand away and pulls in tighter so fast, burying her face in her arms. He jumps back.

“Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me,” she mumbles, over and over until they slur together, not even full words anymore. Shallow and short, her breaths doesn’t seem to be getting her any air.

He tries again, hands fixed at his sides. “Darcy, are you hurt?”

She looks at him, but her eyes are empty, as though she isn’t really seeing him.

“Can you hear me?”

After a moment, she nods.

“Are you hurt?”

She shakes her head. She stares at him, hard, and her breathing began to slow, deep heaving breaths. She must have been taking in too much air because he realises she’s matching hers to his.

He tries to regulate his own, and it takes her nearly five minutes, but she manages to bring herself down, pull herself back.

“Panic attack,” she whispers, lips dry and cracked. 

He nods, still breathing loud and slow. “You’re safe. I’m here.”

Nodding, she keeps her eyes on him. He only moves when she closes her eyes, head tipping back against the wall. He slumps from the position he didn’t know he was holding, falling against the door behind him, eyes still fixed on her, but she’s breathing on her own.

He isn’t sure how long they sit there, but he’s the first to stand up, carefully shutting and locking the door. He’d fix the scuff the handle made on the wall.

“Thank you,” she says, quiet but controlled.

He slides down next to her, as close as possible without touching her. “You’re welcome.”

It takes her time but she slowly loosens up, feet slipping away from her an inch, arms resting around them, focussing on her surroundings.

“I have anxiety,” she says, finally. “Sometimes I have these things called panic attacks. It’s where my body gets so scared and hyped up that everything goes into overdrive. That’s what that was.”

Bucky nods. He hasn’t heard the term, but he’d had a few of those. “What were you afraid of?”

“Stupid shit,” she says, sighing, hands covering her face. “Stuff that I shouldn’t even waste my time thinking about. Scary alien monsters I can deal with, but my own head…”

“Yeah?”

“Well, talking to people. I _hate_ talking to people.”

Bucky frowns. Her hands are fidgeting in her lap, as though she’s nervous even saying it.

“What if I say the wrong thing? What if they think I’m weird? What if they hate me, what if the world’s playing one long practical joke and I’m the butt of it, look at that women, isn’t she fucking worthless and she doesn’t even know-”

He so badly wants to take her hands in his, but she doesn’t want to be touched. He leans in, eyes earnest. “No one thinks about you that way. Everyone who knows you adores you.”

“I know, and that’s the stupid thing. I know it’s _objectively_ true, I know that no one thinks about me that way- but sometimes, it’s just there, I can’t ignore it, it’s a voice telling me in the back of my head that I’m not worth loving, that I annoy everyone around me, that everyone’s going to leave.” She swipes tears off her cheeks. “And then I believe it.”

Everything falls into place about her. Her kindness was sadness. It comes from a place of understanding. She’s more afraid of herself than anyone.

Bucky understands that.

“You know, when I met you in the hospital,” Bucky says, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You just weren’t phased by who I was at all.”

Darcy doesn’t quite smile, but she looks at him. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I was comfortable around you because I knew you had problems too. It made it easier to talk to you, because I figured you were too busy sorting your own shit out to worry about what I looked like or what I says.”

Bucky snorts. “I didn’t know how to take it.”

“What?”

“The way you talked to me. It was so strange, just having this normal gal being chatty with me. Confusing as hell.”

“My apologies, in the future I will try to be uncomfortable and abrasive.” She’s finally smiling, breathing still a little laboured, but she’s made a joke. 

They sit in her hallway a little longer. She heaves herself to standing, wincing and stretching. He stands up too, and she offers him a coffee. While the kettle’s boiling, Steve calls.

“ _Bucky_?” He sounds distinctly controlled, as though the tone’s forced.

“Yeah?”

“ _You’re not in the tower_.”

“No, I’m at Darcy’s apartment. We’re just having a coffee.”

Darcy glances at him, smiling to herself.

Steve exhales. “ _Alright. Are you okay_?”

“We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Why, am I not allowed to have friends?”

He can practically hear Steve roll his eyes. “ _Shut the fuck up_.”

“Seriously, though, am I?”

“ _Jerk_.”

“See ya, punk.”

He hangs up, and Darcy gives him the coffee. Her apartment isn’t particularly decorated, it’s just functional. It has all the furniture it needs, it doesn’t have leaks or mould. It would be a good place to hide.

“You two are adorable,” she says. “You know that, right?”

“What, me and Steve?”

“Yeah,” she says, “you’re like me and Jane.”

“I think you’ll find that you’re women…”

Darcy stops, staring at him. “Oh my- oh my _God_ , are we? I had no idea.”

He points a metal finger at her mouth. “That lip’s gonna get you in trouble one day.”

“You said something so dumb sarcasm was my only option,” she says, shrugging. “Maybe try not pointing out the obvious?”

“Men have different kinds of friendships than women, don’t they?”

Darcy’s entire face crumples, one eye closed, the other watching him. “I sometimes forget you’re from the 1940’s. Umm, basically no. In my experience, women are super protective of their friends. Like, if you think I wouldn’t destroy the world to keep Jane safe you don’t know me very well.”

Bucky considers her. “It didn’t used to be like that.”

“Maybe you just never saw it.”

She might be right and he acknowledges that, because he never had female friends, only dates.

“Until me,” she says.

“Hmm?”

“You said we were friends to Steve,” she says, glaring at him over her coffee.

“Did I? I don’t remember saying that,” he says. “We’re more acquaintances, really.”

“You know what, I’ve just remembered why I don’t have male friends.” She pauses, and he raises his eyebrows. “Except Steve. Steve will be allowed to live when I rule the world.”

He rolls his eyes. Of course the punk who got himself into too many fights and not out of them enough would get saved. “Steve’s more of an asshole than I am.”

“He’s a sweetheart,” she says, pointing a spoon him, then licking it clean.

“Are you kidding? How does he have everyone in this century thinking he’s some saint?”

Darcy shrugs. “Last year Tony hid Steve’s shield for a week because he wanted to repaint it, so he broke into Tony’s lab, stole Dum-E, and gave him to us. It took Tony six months to figure out where Dum-E went: Steve is an American hero I won’t let you slander his good name.” 

Of course she wouldn’t mention the whole saving-New-York saving-the-world saving-him being-Captain-fucking-America thing.

No. She likes him because he stole the goddamn robot.

“Is that why he’s your mascot?”

“Pretty much. He gave us Dum-E and I found my cuddly Captain in storage a few weeks later. It was fate.”

Bucky smiles at her, but Darcy trails off, staring past him.

“I’m sorry for dragging you out here. I didn’t want him to worry about you.”

“Hey.” He leans forward, trying to catch her eye. “You needed help. Steve’s fine, I’m fine- you always call me if you need me, okay?”

Shaking her head, she breathes out. “Yeah.”

“Is there anything that can help?”

“I have medication, if I need it,” she says, nodding. “And I go to therapy- I used to go a lot more, but I’m mostly okay. I can’t be fixed, there’s no cure for it; I’ve got to live with it.”

“It won’t ever go away?”

“No, it won’t. I don’t mind, so much, anymore. It sucks, but it’s not- it’s not who I am, you know? I’m not my illness. I’m more than that.”

He ducks his head, because he doesn’t want her to see the tears in his eyes, and nods. “Yeah, I know.”

“You’re me when I was 20.”

“What?”

“Struggling. In control, most of the time, but it feels like it could slip any second.” She takes his hand that’s resting on the table, next to his coffee. “It doesn’t always feel like that.”

“Every day is a bit better.”

She nods, smiling. “You wait. Five years from now, no one will recognise you.”

He holds up the metal arm, and she grins.

“I’ll paint it blue. It’ll match Cap’s uniform.”

He rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t mind so much. Mid-conversation, his stomach growls. Darcy thinks it’s his 8,000 a day calorie intake that needs fulfilling, but he knows it’s just because the food he had eaten isn’t enough.

“There’s a café across the road, they do the best paninis,” she says. 

Leaving the tower for another enclosed space is one thing. Going out in public is another.

She sees his face. “Stupid idea. We could call for takeout?”

“Do you want to go to the café?”

She watches him, but he keeps his face perfectly still. Surrender washes over her, sighing. “I would like to.”

“Then let’s go.”

She changes first, into those form fitting leggings every woman seems to wear in the 21st century and a baggy t-shirt. He sits on her bed while she reapplies her makeup, and he notices she wears a little more than normal.

“The routine helps,” she says, poking her contact lenses in, “and it just makes me feel more comfortable, sometimes. Knowing I look alright.”

Deft fingers make liquid her skin, blending until it’s as though she never applied it. 

“I used to watch my mom do her makeup.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Then we got older, and she taught my sister, and they both just loved it, you know? They never said why. I never asked.”

She holds his gaze in the mirror. “Now you know.” 

In the café, they sit themselves at a window table, crammed around the tiny table to people watch. Darcy orders the turkey, avocado and goat’s cheese panini, while Bucky is tempted by bacon and cheddar.

Darcy distracts herself chatting to the waitress, who it seems she’d been long friends with, so Bucky pulls his phone out and has JARVIS scan the area. No weapons or recording devices are found in the area, but JARVIS promises to regularly update.

He relaxes into his seat as Darcy turns back to him, the general chatter of the café softer to him now.

“Her mum owns the place,” Darcy says. “She’s been here a few years.”

“She seems nice,” he says, glancing over his shoulder.

“She is. Is this too much? Should we go?”

“No, I need to do this.” He looks around the room again, but this time just to look. It’s all pastel colours and bunches of daisies in jam jars. It isn’t to his taste, but he can see how Darcy could like it. “So why was the date cut short?”

“He made some bullshit excuse about getting a text and there being an emergency and he bailed,” Darcy says, shrugging. “He kept asking about me about my job. I mean, I know we’re allowed to say we work in Stark Tower, but I don’t like letting that cat out of the bag too soon, you know? It could make me into a target. I just kept talking about Jane and deflecting. I don’t think he liked that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was only our fourth date,” she says. “I wasn’t looking to marry him.”

Bucky swallows, and took a deep breath. “I need to tell you something.”

Leaning in, she watches him. He looks away. He isn’t quite sure how he will cope with her looking at him differently, but he can’t keep it to himself. He’s been robbed of his one last day.

“So, last night. I was in the kitchen late and I was chopping something up and Steve took me by surprise, and I attacked him.”

Darcy’s breathing hitches. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, yeah, the doctor patched him up.” Bucky tells the table more than he tells her. “I just thought you should know.”

“Thank you for telling me,” she says, reaching over and taking his hands in hers. “Are you alright?”

He blinks, finally looking up at her. Her eyes are wide and she’s chewing her bottom lip, and when their eyes meet she squeezes his hands.

“Why do people keep asking me that?”

“Because we want to know,” Darcy says, steady and calm. She doesn’t let go when he tries to pull away.

“Steve asked me that after I stabbed him.” 

Darcy winces. “He was worried about you.”

“Darcy, I could have killed him- I nearly killed him-”

“He probably knows that,” she says, but it isn’t condescending. “He made his choice a long time ago.”

The unsaid ‘so did I’ lives in her eyes as much as any of her other emotions.

“Think I could ever talk him out it?”

“About as much as you could talk Jane out of her lab.”

Bucky frowns. “But you always talk Jane out of the lab to eat and sleep.”

“Yes,” Darcy says, blasé. “I am not you. I’m magic and I have a gift. You don’t.”

Inexplicably, it’s as though he’d never told her, her grin sly. Before she could move so far they never could get back to it, he kisses her hand before he lets it go.

Bucky could have sworn her cheeks came over red, but their food arrives and distracts them.

***

They sat for hours, talking and laughing and ordering more coffee until about four. Bucky knew Steve would be getting nervous no matter how many reassuring texts he sent, so he pays the bill, walking Darcy back to her apartment and heading to Stark Tower.

JARVIS tells him Steve’s in the kitchen, and he heads that way. Their voices are loud in the quiet of the tower.

“I’m just saying, she’s basically a civilian-”

“And I’ve talked to her, Sam, she knows the risks.”

“Have you met her? She doesn’t stop for breath, let alone for maybe considering what the hell she’s getting into.”

Bucky puts his hands in his pockets, stood in the doorway. “Darcy doesn’t stop for anything.”

Sam fixes his gaze on him, but Steve steps back, scratching his neck.

“I assume she’s who you’re talking about.”

Sam sighs. “I know you’re doing better, but you’re not _better_. You’re putting her in stupid amounts of danger. She’s not as durable as Steve. What if you lost it with her?”

“I won’t.”

He turns to Steve. “How many of your bones has he broken in the last six months?”

Steve presses his lips together, but Bucky doesn’t flinch.

“I know that wrist’s been strapped up at least three times,” Sam says, pointing at Steve’s left. “And I know she’s great, I’ve met her a few times, but seriously, you need to think what you could do to her. You could snap her neck before you even know she’s there, man, but I bet she’s never even thought about it-”

“You don’t need to think for her, Sam,” Steve says.

“Yeah, okay. Do you seriously think she’d stay if she knew everything-?”

“She does.” Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Steve isn’t looking at either of them. “Know everything.”

Taking a deep breath, Bucky steadies himself.

“What, you told her?”

Steve sighs, and looks at Bucky even though it was Sam’s question. “I sat her down and showed her the files.”

There are two. One on Sergeant James Barnes, one on the Winter Soldier. There’s overlap.

“Why?”

“I had to do it, otherwise they would’ve gotten Natasha to. She signed a waiver of liability.”

Sam frowns, turning to him. “A what?”

“If Buck hurts her, she can’t hold Tony or the government or anyone else responsible. If he kills her, her next of kin can’t sue anyone.”

Bucky isn’t sure why breathing is so damn hard, and his voice cracks. “She signed that?” he says.

“She demanded to. A lot of people have been worried, poking their noses in, thinking you were gonna hurt her and she didn’t want anyone else thinking about it anymore. Said she didn’t want anyone else thinking they had a right to tell her she didn’t know what she was doing or make a judgement call for her.”

Sam huffs. “So you can’t just tell her to stop talking to him?”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t.”

If there was some sanity in the world, this would have been the moment Bucky clung to it. “She’s seen the pictures?”

Brains blown out. Stabbed in the heart. Stabbed in the liver, and bled out, because they wanted information. Limbs scattered across a room. Two little girls, still lying in their beds like they’re asleep.

“She saw it all.”

Bucky needs to sit down, but his legs won’t move. He leans against a counter.

“She cried, a lot,” Steve carries on, and Bucky tries to breathe, “and when she finished, she said; ‘if you’d fallen off that train instead of Bucky, this would be your file’.”

Sam tries to argue, but Steve cuts him off.

“She’s right. I could snap her neck as easy as Bucky could. Hell, I’m faster than him. He could do it cleaner but I could it quicker.”

“You wouldn’t-”

“You think Bucky would?”

“Bucky was a programmed, brainwashed assassin. He hurts people before he even knows what he’s doing-”

“Have you seen the way she walks?”

Both of them stop to look at Bucky. He pulls himself up, chin in the air.

Sam seems to think the question is mad, eyebrow raised.

“She’s always carrying something too heavy, off balance basically all the time. She stomps, as well, she doesn’t give a shit if people hear her coming, because they hear her talking anyway, and she hunches her shoulders a bit, usually because she’s looking at something. Sometimes she skips, too- says it’s faster than walking, but not exercise like running.” Bucky sighs. “She just… I’ve not snapped on her because before she walks in a room I know she’s not a threat. She’s the kind of person the Winter Soldier would have ignored.”

Sam rubs his forehead. “…I can’t tell you what to do. I just know, though, you’d never get over hurting someone like her.”

For the first time, he realises it’s his choice too. He can’t tell her not to put herself in his path, but he can decide the pain wouldn’t be worth it if he did hurt her. He could walk away. Bucky stares down that narrow, lonely path, and something settles in him. Perhaps it’s merely because he has the freedom to look at it and wonder, but there’s nothing in him that wants to live the way the Winter Soldier had. Not anymore.

“I know,” Bucky says.


	4. Chapter 4

A few weeks pass, and he sees Darcy on most days, whether it’s because she texts him to bring her coffee or bagels to force feed Jane, or because they’re trying to recreate the process that creates stars and they’ve managed to make a nice fireworks display he needs to see, or just because he hasn’t all day and she isn’t going to be so near for no reason.

It’s nearly seven, and that’s usually the time Darcy calls it quits on coaxing Jane out of the lab and gives Thor a call, so he’s thinking about going down to her anyway when she texts him. 

_Jane just kicked me out of the lab :(_

_Why?_

_Because she doesn’t appreciate iconic staples of music culture :( :( :(_

_You’re still singing that goddamn song. Aren’t you?_

_\o/ I LIKE TO--- MOVE IT! \o/_

_I’m in the kitchen. Don’t come up if you’re still singing._

She skips in, still humming the same seven notes or so over and over again, stealing his mug of coffee as he turns his back on it.

Cursing at her, he pours himself another one. “I’d kick you out if I were your boss, too.”

“That’s awfully rude,” she says. “I’m an exceptional assistant and wonderful individual. You won’t break my spirit, not for a second.”

He looks at her, then his coffee, and throws it in the sink, grabbing a beer out of the fridge.

“Did I just turn you to booze?”

Flicking it open with his metal hand, he raises it to her. “Cheers to the friends that do break your spirit and turn you to alcoholism.”

“Dude, don’t drink yourself to death. Your robot arm is really good at opening jars.”

He salutes, and she grins, plopping herself down onto the sofa. Sitting next to her, he relaxes back into the cushions and shuts his eyes, breathing slowly.

“Long day?”

“Yeah. We’re going on a raid tomorrow,” he says. “Just me and Steve, close combat. It should only be a few days, but I thought you’d want to know.”

Stark’s traced the source of the missiles back to the Canadian border, and they’re going to attempt an interception to find where they’re being brought in from.

The couch jogs underneath her movement, and she nudges his thigh, bumps his arm, until she presses all along his arm, her body heat scorching. She rests her head on his shoulder. “Keep safe. All that jazz.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“I know. 

Digging in his pocket, he pulls out a phone, and passes it to her. “It’s a burner phone. If you need me, use that, my number’s already in it.”

She takes it, resting it against his chest, not wanting to move. “Any reason I need a burner phone?”

“If anything does get traced on my end, I don’t want them having your actual phone number.”

Darcy sighs. “Oh.”

JARVIS turns on some music, more background noise than anything, while they mull over their drinks. Bucky’s halfway through his when she steals a sip.

“Do you ever actually get something you want for yourself?”

“Nah,” she says, burrowing into his side. “I’m surrounded by superheroes. I don’t have to lift a finger to do anything.”

He lifts his head up, glancing at his watch.

“You need to get to bed, don’t you?”

“We’re leaving at four.”

He takes his time finishing his beer, but when he does they turned the music off and stand up. Darcy washes the mugs and Bucky dries them, putting them away.

Darcy’s eyes are on the door, but she turns to Bucky and summons a smile. “Well, I’m going to drag Jane out of the lab, so I’ll see you when you get back, yeah?”

She seems to try to hug him in such a flash he can’t reject her, but he sees it coming and pulls her in. The only noise in the room is the clicks and whirs of his arm, as the plates shift and settle and resettle at every adjustment he makes. One of her hands leave his lower ribs and rest on his arm.

He lets her go, and her hand slid down the metal, dropping away at the knuckles.

“Look after yourself.”

“Have fun babysitting.”

She rolls her eyes, smiling with him, and leaves for the elevators. He heads to his room to capture whatever sleep he can.

***

On the second day, Steve agrees that all this green doesn’t suit them. Leaves, slimy moss that grows on everything and is welcome nowhere, and so many thorny bushes they lose count of how many times blood is drawn. They’ve achieved nothing, waiting on more information from Natasha through a communication device that isn’t quite a phone, but isn’t a radio either. Its near impossible to tune into, or something. Stark explained it so Bucky ignored him.

The mission is to find the border weakness that HYDRA exploits before taking out the operation, otherwise it might get used again. Steve seems more fixated on destroying, countering and messing around the remaining HYDRA operatives than Bucky is. They’re brothers, they know the worst parts of each other, and he knows that getting some kind of revenge might be the only thing that settles Steve.

Wanting revenge comes with the kind of fortitude of conviction Bucky doesn’t have. He’s been so busy trying to undo everything they’d put in his head, actually thinking about the operatives out there took a back burner. Now, he doesn’t care.

Keeping Steve alive is up there on his list of things he cares about, however, so here he is, possibly in Canada, possibly in the US, staring at a canopy of green instead of light pollution.

Steve has reorganised his bag three times, and had decided a fourth is necessary, although Bucky is pretty sure he is avoiding talking too much. He found a comfortable bit of dirt an hour ago, and he isn’t going to move until a life is threatened.

“When did you show Darcy the files?” He needs to know.

“You’d hadn’t been talking to her long.” Steve throws his sleeping bag down next to Bucky’s, and stops. “You got those texts from her, and I realised you were friends, or you were on the way… she’s a _civilian_ , Buck, I had to tell her-”

“Quit it,” Bucky sighs.

“What?”

“Quit apologizing. I’m glad you told her.”

“You are?”

“I thought she was gonna find out one day.” He closes his eyes to all that green. “I’d have to tell her. She’d walk away, or someone would make her leave, and I wouldn’t have stopped her.”

“No?”

Bucky twists one of his metal fingers back and forth. “Well, I thought you were it.”

There’s a question in the silence that follows. 

“I’d been HYDRA’s for seventy years. I could’ve been functional for at least another two hundred. But you showed up, you hauled my ass outta trouble and we both got out the other side. I figured I’d had my share of luck. You were what the 21st century offered me, and I’d be damned if I asked for anything else. Hell, I didn’t want anything else.”

“And then she shows up.”

“Stark nearly blows her up and I thought it was too much to ask for, for it to last.” Bucky looks at Steve. “But she knows, and she hasn’t gone anywhere… now I think she might actually stay.”

“I think she will. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other,” Steve says.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “There’s no future there, she might want kids or something and I’m not doing that.”

Steve tries to interrupt, but Bucky cuts him off with a grin.

“Besides, you'd be a real good therapist, but I ain’t taking your relationship advice. I was there when you took Trish Potter out.”

“Bastard-” Steve says, swiping at him, but the not-phone beeps three times. He grabs it, and Natasha’s tinny voice rattles off coordinates and a time.

***

On the fifth day, a woman with big glasses and a baggy jumper finds Natasha in the kitchen- she isn’t even aware Lewis has clearance for the private floors- and demands to know how Bucky and Steve are doing on their mission. They’d been longer than she’d been told.

She isn’t blindsided, because she’d seen Lewis talk to both Bucky and Steve at one point or another, but she does arch one eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re cleared for that kind of-”

“He said three days. It’s been five.” Lewis glares at her, and Natasha sighs. She already knows a lot.

“It’s just taking longer than we thought. There’s more to do, but they were alive and safe at their last checkpoint.”

Lewis swallows, thanks her, and leaves.

***

On the sixth day, the burner phone he gave her buzzes.

_The worst’s over. We’re cleaning up now._

In the labs with Jane, Darcy stabs out a response, but he doesn’t answer. She doesn’t care too much.

***

A helicopter drops them off a three in the afternoon, a week after they left. Both of them scratched to hell, Steve nicked on the shoulder by a throwing knife, they sigh in relief when Natasha offers to carry their bags for them.

“We’re already coordinating with border control,” she tells them. “We’ll shut it down when Agent 13 gets back to us.”

“She alright?”

“We haven’t heard from her in three weeks. She said she might struggle to get in touch,” Natasha says. “So we’re not worried.”

Steve nods, rubbing his eyes. “Shit, I might take a nap.”

Natasha wrinkles her nose. “And a shower. Please.”

“Jesus,” Bucky breathes. “A _shower_.”

Back in his rooms, he strips on the way to the bathroom and turns his phone on, abandoning it a shelf to duck into the shower (it has a ‘rainfall’ attachment and Bucky can stand under it for hours). He reaches out to grab shampoo, but his phone bleeps three times.

Wiping his hand on a towel, he glances at the messages.

All Darcy, all daft updates on her week.

One was a photo- her Captain America plushie propped up, safety goggles balanced on the top of his head and a beaker of green liquid next to him. It’s captioned: _CAPTAIN AMERICA SAYS DO YOUR PATRIOTIC DUTY AND EXPLODE STUFF_

But what makes him laugh is the next text:

_So I accidentally dropped phosperus oxide in that green stuff. Caused a small fire. Jane’s eyebrows are singed. She’s pissed. But Captain America escaped unscathed!_

He snatches up the bottle, washing his hair as quickly as possible, not bothering to dry it. Yanking clothes on, he heads to the elevators.

“JARVIS, can you take me to 93?”

“Certainly, Sergeant.”

Bucky follows the familiar corridor to the lab, buzzed in by JARVIS. Darcy is stooped down, eye level with the desk as Jane lowers an eyedropper over a few pink crystals.

He watches, not sure if they’ve heard him enter, but Darcy beckons him over and he joins her, staring at the crystal.

“We want it to go blue,” she says. “It’s a whole starry science thing.”

Three drops land on the crystals. The colour shifts under the bright lights, lilac to electric blue.

Darcy stands up. “It went blue. It would’ve exploded in our faces otherwise. Excellent.”

“Hey, Darcy,” Bucky says, straightening too.

She pulls off her plastic safety goggles, and grins. “Hello.”

Jane picks up a crystal with a tweezer, peering at it. “It’s been quiet around here without you.”

“It has,” Darcy says. “How long have you been back?”

Bucky glances at his watch. “Thirty minutes? Maybe less? I had a shower and came down.”

Giving Jane the side eye, Bucky bites his lip while Darcy waits for Jane to look at her, pulling increasingly stupid faces. Jane catches her mid-tongue out.

“You’ll only annoy me if you stay,” Jane says, rolling her eyes. “Get Leo for me on your way out? And I might need you stay late one night in the next month. You won’t complain.”

“I’ll feed you grapes and call you Lady Jane all of tomorrow,” Darcy says, nodding solemnly. “Thank you love you text you later!”

Bucky almost doesn’t keep up with her she speaks so fast, grabbing his hand and her phone and dragging him out of the lab. She pauses next door, telling a lab assistant playing a game on his phone that Jane needs him, and pulls him with renewed vigour.

Her hand small and warm, she squeezes his in the elevator, looking up at him properly for the first time.

“You wanna eat something?”

“There’s stuff in the kitchen upstairs?”

Darcy grins, and JARVIS is already taking them up.

Steve’s already lounged on the sofa, eating takeaway. She grabs a granola bar and plonks herself next to him, and Bucky grabs a packet of pasta and starts on something a bit more substantial.

Steve holds out a phone to her, three kids and a woman in the picture. “Clint’s family. I can’t believe how big Nathanial is now.”

“Aww,” she says, looking close. Bucky watches the smile spread across her face. “He’s the spitting image of Clint, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he is.”

“What a gorgeous family,” she says, and he scrolls through more photos of them, Clint in some of them. “Do you think they’d adopt me?”

“Clint’s too busy redecorating the bedroom for more kids,” Steve says, and Darcy rolls her eyes.

“Never thought Avengers would be domestic.” Steve tilts his head at her, and she shrugs. “You’re all so busy saving our lives all the time, I figured none of you had time for families.”

“Most of them don’t. Clint keeps pretending he’s retired,” Bucky says, and Darcy shoots him a grin, arm slouched over the back of the couch to keep both of them in sight.

“If it meant I could duck out of the shitty fights and spend more time with my kids, I would too.”

“You want kids?” Steve asks, and Bucky knows that tone. It’s the one that butter wouldn’t melt on, question casual, eating fries as though he’s only half listening to her.

He glances at Bucky, and Bucky wants to throw his chopping board at Steve’s head.

“Well, ehh,” Darcy says, frowning. “I didn’t want kids, like ever, until I was about 22, and then I had a boyfriend who utterly loved them and I kind of warmed up to the idea, so… maybe? I’m flexible. If the guy wants them, sure, if he doesn’t, well, no biggie. Why, Cap? You offering?”

Bucky chuckles at Steve’s dropped jaw, and Darcy winks at him, stealing some fries. Steve starts making fun of Darcy, and she pokes back at him, but Bucky’s smile fades.

If she’d said yes. Kids were everything she ever wanted, she couldn’t imagine living without them, she was already looking for that perfect husband and a house in the suburbs. She wanted the kind of future normal people wanted, the lives he and Steve had mentioned in passing when they’d thought about in the war but never really believed in. If she’d said yes, it might’ve shredded his hope- he could never give her what she wanted. Not having her would be easier to stomach.

“I never really thought about it,” Steve says, breaking him out of his reverie. Bullshit.

“The war?”

“Yeah, too busy fighting Nazis.”

“As far as reasons go not to make long term plans, I think that’s acceptable,” Darcy says. “I’ve always found I’m happiest when I’m not thinking too far ahead anyway, just enjoying the moment.”

Steve raises an eyebrow in Bucky’s direction, and Darcy starts to ask something, but JARVIS interrupts.

“Miss Lewis, Dr Foster has apologized for doing so but she has requested your immediate presence in her laboratory.”

Darcy throws her head upwards, sighing. “Has she blown anything up?”

“I don’t believe so, no.”

“She might have actually gotten somewhere,” Darcy says, standing and stretching. Stealing yet more fries, she smirks at Steve and ducks out of his reach. She goes right around the counter to kiss Bucky on the cheek. “Sorry. Movie tonight? You seriously need to watch _Rear Window_ , it’s important to me.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “Sure. JARVIS’ll get you to my room. Go on, get outta here. Scram.”

“Don’t have fun without me, boys!” she calls from down the hall, already stepping in an elevator.

The moment the doors close on her, Bucky aims a carrot at Steve’s head. “What the hell was that?”

“A carrot,” Steve says, glaring at Bucky and putting it on the coffee table.

“Why’d you ask her that?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “You never have, figured it was worth asking.”

“ _Why_?”

“You’ve wanted kids forever.”

“I don’t want them _now_. Look at me, Steve, what kind of father would I _be_ -?”

“You’d be a helluva father, Buck,” Steve says. “But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you needed to know what she wanted, too, so you could figure out what you want.”

Bucky rakes his hands through his hair, and Steve abandons his takeaway, standing on the other side of the island counter. 

“Just because she- kids, Steve. I’ve known her a month. _Really_?”

Steve shrugs. “It was a deal breaker for me. I went on a date, she mentioned kids and I realised I don’t want them. I’m not even sure I want a girl. Maybe if we still lived in the forties, maybe if the war was over, I would. But I don’t now. So you know how she feels, you can figure out if you line up-”

“She doesn’t care either way, she’d line up with anyone-”

Steve slaps a hand to his forehead. “You’re not taking away some future from her. You’re not taking anything away from her if you decide you don’t. Doesn’t that change something?”

“What if she changes her mind?”

“What if the sun explodes?”

Bucky whips another carrot at the wall. It shatters, rather than imbedding itself in the plaster, but it’s satisfying anyway. Stark must’ve Hulk-proofed the place.

Dropping onto the seat in front of him, Steve leans in.

“Buck, do you want her?”

He stares ahead, jaw clenched.

“What if someone else has their eye on her? What if they get there first?”

Bucky says nothing.

“Are you just gonna watch her walk away every damn time because you’re scared?”

Bucky has his eyes fixed on Steve’s shoulder. “She always comes back. That’s all I want from her.”

Steve’s head rolls back, slouching in his seat, fingers pressed to his temples. “Darcy’s smart, Buck. She knows you need stability and normality and a little bit more protection than she does. Did it ever occur to you she doesn’t want to complicate your life and make things more difficult for you? That she might think _she’s_ a complication?”

“She doesn’t-”

“She told me so.”

At that, Bucky finally looks at him. His heart thuds in his chest.

“After I showed her the files, she told me she’ll never make a move on you. She’ll never try anything- she doesn’t want to get in the way of you getting better.”

Bucky feels like the pit of his stomach falls out, and if he hadn’t already been sitting he would have needed to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot how much I love Darcy in this story.  
> BTW THIS IS IMPORTANT: the title it stolen from the song 'I'll Be Good' by Jaymes Young- please go listen to it, it's _so_ Bucky it hurts in a good way.


	5. Chapter 5

JARVIS lets Darcy in Bucky’s apartment in Stark Tower.

“Hello?” she says, closing the door behind her. The kitchen and living room are empty. “Anyone home?”

A distant voice shouts the affirmative, and purse on the coffee table, she flops onto the sofa.

Bucky comes out of his room, tossing her a beer from the fridge.

“Ta,” she says, barely catching it.

He glances at the clock. Nearly midnight. “I thought you’d passed out on one of the benches,” he says, sitting next to her. He’s just close enough to her that his arm brushes against hers, his knee touching her thigh.

“Nearly. She did a thing and I had to take down numbers. You weren’t going to bed, were you?”

“No.”

She sighs, sinking into the sofa, drinking deeply. “It’s probably too late to watch the movie.”

“We can raincheck.”

“Thanks.”

Bucky watches her, the corner of her mouth pulled down in melancholy. “What?”

Wincing, Darcy takes a gulp of beer. “Thor was there, in the lab, when I got down. Jane was being all… I don’t know- cute?- with him. Kinda made me feel shitty, to be honest.”

Bucky nodded. “That’s what being around Steve and Peggy was like. I always talked about getting myself a girl on the front lines, just so I could see her more, but I never got around to it.”

Darcy watches him through her eyelashes, smiling. “What were they like?”

“Sickening,” Bucky says, shrugging, and Darcy laughs. “No, really, they were. Making eyes at each other, bickering, dancing round each other like goddamn morons. She was a stunner, too.”

“You liked her.”

“Until she wouldn’t take her eyes off Steve to look at me, yeah.”

Darcy pouts, thinking. “To be fair to her, have you seen Steve’s abs?”

“Actually, yes.”

“Well, I’ve only seen them through a t-shirt, and believe me that was enough.”

“He’s your type?”

Darcy quirks an eyebrow. “I’m surrounded by gods, assassins, and scientific perfection. I spend every moment I can admiring the physical impossibility of the people around me. I mean…c’mon. _Natasha_.”

Bucky nods, rolling his sleeves up. “You make an excellent point.”

Three beers later, he’s pulled her legs onto his lap and is telling her old Howling Commandos stories.

“-so they’re all stood around, glaring at each other- I’m the only one who gets to laugh, because Steve was off patrolling the border and it’s obvious I’m going, Steve doesn’t go anywhere without me- and it’s the final match, their hands are out, and they’re eyeing each other up like they’re about to hit each other. 1, 2, 3- Dugan wins, scissors on paper, he’s roaring for one _second_ , and Steve rolls up and says; right, Bucky and Gabe are coming with me. Dugan woulda shot Gabe if he had a gun, I swear to God.”

Darcy snorts into her beer, trying not to choke. “Sounds like y’all were the original Avengers.”

“We were better.”

“Why’s that?”

“We didn’t have Tony.”

Laughing, Darcy makes a megaphone out of her hand. “Oooh, buuurn!”

Bucky smirks at her, draining the last of his beer and putting it down on the table, his hand resting on her leg. “Ego never got in the way with the Howling Commandos. Only idiocy.”

“Sounds like an accurate description of you and Steve.”

He raises his eyebrows at her, grinning. “I’m hurt.”

“It’s _true_ ,” she says, laughing. “You’re stubborn to the point of stupid, you’ll happily throw yourself into the path of bullets for each other, and you’d never let the other one do the same for you. You’re both idiots!”

Rolling his neck, he thinks about how to respond. She isn’t criticising them. “…I hate it when you’re right.”

“I’m always right. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” she says, sinking lower into the sofa, shifting her legs further onto him.

“What?”

“You’re an Avenger now. And as previously stated, this building is filled with beautiful people. Wanda and Agent 13 and Sif and Maria and Jane- and me, obviously- and I was wondering if women have been ruined for you the way men have been ruined for me.”

Bucky frowns at her. “What do you mean?”

Throwing an arm over her face, she makes an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. “They’re _all_ gorgeous. _All_ of them. Don’t you look at normal women and just… there’s no interest whatsoever, because they can’t live up to the crazy expectations you’ve got now?”

He doesn’t know how to answer.

“I was on my way to work today, and this guy on the subway gets talking to me. He’s really nice, quite funny, he’s an architect, and he asks for my number... and I _don’t_ give it to him. I’m convinced that this job, you lot, have ruined dating actual human beings.”

She isn’t quite looking at him, and he’s glad to be included in her generalisation. Taking a moment to pick the right phrasing, he catches her eye. “I think I know what you mean.”

“And I saw Michael last week,” Darcy says, sipping her beer, the hairs on Bucky’s neck standing on end, “and… _why_ did I date him?”

Bucky covers his mouth, trying not to laugh. “No idea, Darcy.” Too lazy to grab another one, he steals hers, drinking too.

“He wasn’t right for me at all, anyway,” she says, her absentminded flick at his arm ringing against the metal, trying to take her beer back. He keeps it out of reach with a grin. “Oh, screw you-”

Unable to reclaim it, she glares at him, trying to heave her legs off his, but he grabs them and holds her in place. She pokes his metal arm.

“That shit isn’t fair. You’re cheating. Arms that can lift cars are not allowed to get in the middle of this.”

“I can’t lift cars.”

“Have you tried?”

“…no.”

“Arms that can potentially lift cars are not allowed.”

Sitting up, hand trying to pry his arm away finger by finger, all she intends on doing is grabbing another beer- but he isn’t going to watch her walk away again. He abandons the beer on the arm of the couch.

Relaxing his hand, movements slow, he leans towards her. She starts at his proximity, but a hand rests on her ribs, s gentle urge to stay. His eyes fix on her lips.

He shifts her closer, her weight nothing, practically sitting in his lap. Her hands rest on his chest, his metal hand sliding up her spine and resting at the nape of her neck. Her breath shudders even though his lips aren’t quite brushing against hers, moving past them to whisper in her ear.

“You,” he says, lips touching her cheek as they move, breath blowing against her ear, “ruined other women for me.”

Her fingers trace up and down his collarbone, eyes blown. “You sure?” she says. Her breathing’s ragged, and Jesus he’s already waited too long.

The kiss is heavy and vehement and they’re not nearly close enough. Her hands fists in his hair, she pulls herself up, straddling him. He stands up and lowers her back onto the couch, kneeling over her. He chuckles against her lips when she tries to yank him off balance and drag him closer, hand sliding up her jaw to get a better angle and deepen the kiss.

Arching her back to press herself against him, she’s all soft curves and rounded edges, but he breaks the kiss to whisper in her ear.

 _Yes_ , she says, voice low and sharp and certain.

Her breathing hitches when he kisses her ear, and he smirks. He noses down her jawline, teeth skimming her skin, tongue flicking out to taste, sucking gently, paying attention to her every reaction. When he finds a spot that makes her outright moan is presses it, teasing her until she squirms, scrabbling against him and pulling him closer all at once. At the hollow her throat, her shirt’s in the way and the buttons are too small and fiddly for his left hand. He rips it open instead, grinning when she squeals and laughs- _you’re paying for that_ \- and drags him up to catch his smirk with another kiss.

They fumble with his shirt but as soon as he drops it on the floor her hands learn the press of his ribs, his smooth expanses of skin, the ridges of his spine. He shivers into her touch and hooking her ankles together behind his back, and leaning in, he murmurs her name in her ear like it’s a relief.

They don’t make it to the bedroom.

***

Dawn breaks, and because the curtains aren’t shut, it stirs Bucky awake. They’re both naked and her head’s on his chest, his arms wrapped around her. The sheets are only drawn up to their waists. Her hair’s fanned out over him, foot curled inside his ankle, breath puffing across his chest. He doesn’t wake her. 

The sun creeps across the window, and only when it shines directly on her does she shift, curling tighter into him, face burrowing in his chest.

He smooths her hair out of her face and she catches his hand, meshing their fingers together and dropping them on his chest.

“Darce…”

“Still sleeping,” she says, voice throaty and rough.

Squeezing her hand, he smiles, closing his eyes, intent on drifting in and out of sleep until she wants to move. 

They start awake at a fist hammering on the apartment door.

“Bucky? Tony wants us on 104.” Steve tries the handle. “Open the door, Buck.”

Bucky opens his mouth, tries to sit up- Darcy presses a finger to his lips and moves, splaying herself completely across him.

“Let him in, JARVIS,” she says, smirking into Bucky’s shoulder. Into his ear, she says, “I’m asleep.”

He manages to find the edge of the sheet and pull it up before Steve barges in.

“Tony’s called an Avenger’s meeting, we’ve gotta-”

Steve cuts himself off, staring. Bucky gives him a sarcastic wave with the only limb free from Darcy.

“Is that…?” Steve mouths, pointing at the mass of dark hair tickling Bucky’s face, and Bucky nods.

“Don’t wake her up,” Bucky says, quiet, and Darcy tries not to giggle in his ear.

Steve plugs a laugh with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, but it sounds like it’s an emergency, we’ve gotta be there in 15-”

Bucky purses his lips. “I’m kinda held down. I’m sure you can manage without me, punk.”

“Buck, we need everyone there-”

Darcy shifts, looking up at Steve through narrowed eyes. “Do not make me move, Cap.”

Steve bites his lip, holding back a smile. “We’ve got world saving to do, Darcy.”

“You both suck,” she says, pecking Bucky on the lips and rolling off him. “I’m staying here, by the way. Your bed is so much more comfortable than mine.”

Steve retreats, saying he’ll wait outside, and Bucky hauls himself out of bed.

“You’re gonna stink,” Darcy grins, propping herself up and watching him.

“And whose fault is that?” he says, yanking on pants.

“I think we can both claim some responsibility for it.” She huffs out a breath, eyes sparkling.

“What?”

“I’m going to have to go to work in yesterday’s clothes.” She sits straight up. “Wait, you _ripped_ yesterday’s clothes, my shirt’s ruined-”

Rooting through his drawers, he throws a white shirt at her.

“Thank youuu,” she says, holding it up. “That’s going be a dress on me-”

Bucky groans, t-shirt on. “God I want to see that,” he says, catching her face and kissing her fiercely.

She breaks away too fast. “I’m sure you do,” she says, shoving him away. “Get gone, hero. See you when you get back.”

He salutes, eyes lingering on her in his bed before he turns the corner.

***

The Avengers are headed to Vancouver. HYDRA are importing the short range missiles into the US from Vancouver to Seattle, then working them across the country to New York. They’re attacking Vancouver and Seattle, but they still don’t know what the target in New York is.

“Someone needs to clean up New York,” Tony says. “I’m staying.”

Steve nods. “You’ll need backup, just in case.”

Tony points at Bucky. “I want him. His whole MO was finding and blowing things up.”

Bucky wants to argue, but Tony isn’t wrong.

“Are you alright without Rogers?” Natasha asked him, and he nodded.

“How much do we know about Vancouver?”

“Agent 13 is in. She’s sent us blueprints, codes to bypass security, details of personnel, the next the whole works,” Tony says. “Same for Seattle.”

“Tactically speaking, New York is going to be the most difficult, then,” Natasha says.

“Tony, Buck and I will stay,” Steve says, nodding. “Natasha, Clint, you’re in charge. Do Vancouver, and follow up with Seattle, and we’ll catch everything here.”

Natasha nods, examining the information Tony gave them with Clint.

“We’ll be watching over everything,” Steve assures them, and the tactics are drawn up while JARVIS organises their flight plan.

***

Darcy is sure he’s gone. He doesn’t come at lunch, and he doesn’t text, so he must be on a mission.

That’s why she throws herself at him when he meets her at the end of her shift. He catches her, unmoved by her weight, putting her down to kiss her.

Jane keeps her head down, beaming behind her hand as she passes them.

“I thought- Avengers?”

“I’m staying in New York,” he says. “I’m going to be busy, though. I just thought I’d let you know.”

“You around tonight?”

“It all depends,” he says, smile slipping. “Sorry.”

“You will sleep.”

“Well, yeah-”

“I’ll get a change of clothes and a toothbrush from home,” she says, kissing him on the cheek, “and see you at some point tonight.”

He can’t hold back the grin, kissing her again.

It’s nearly midnight when Tony admits there isn’t much more they can do, algorithms and biometrics running through JARVIS that could take hours to wield any results. The team are hitting Vancouver in the morning. They leave Tony tapping his pen on the desk, staring at the screens. Steve promises they’d be back early to oversee Vancouver.

Bucky’s apartment is quiet and dark. Curled up on the sofa, Darcy sleeps, book still on her lap. As gently as he can, he picks her up, her head rolling onto his shoulder. He tucks her up in bed.

Coming back from a shower, he pulls on joggers and climbs into bed with her. She mumbles something, rolling towards him, a hand holding his forearm. He watches her until he falls asleep.

***

The light isn’t filtering in the next morning when a leg kicks Bucky.

He snaps his bedside table open and rolls off the bed, gun targeting thin air before he takes another breath, but Darcy’s struggling with the sheets, not an attacker. Kicking out, mumbling something, her eyes are scrunched up shut, and Bucky clicks the safety back on, dizzy at the sudden air in his lungs.

Dropping the gun back in the bedside table and sliding it shut, he climbs back onto the bed. He has to catch her flailing arms before they smack him in the face. “Darcy- Darcy, wake up, it’s me, you’re having a nightmare. You need to wake up-”

Her eyes blink open, staring up at Bucky kneeling over her, suddenly still. After a few moments, he lets her wrists go.

“You okay?” 

She swallows, stiff. “-yeah, I’m fine.” Forcing herself to exhale, she sinks back into the bed. 

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

It takes her a moment, staring up at him, before she looks at her arms. “No, no, of course not. Sorry, I don’t- I don’t normally have nightmares, I don’t know what that was.”

He shakes his head, head and shoulders resting against the headboard. “Don’t apologize.”

Accepting his open arms, she rests her head on his stomach, pulling the sheets back up. One hand stroking her hair, the other making nonsense patterns on her back, he wonders if there's anything better than her warm, soft weight in his arms.

Her head whips up. “When did we get in your bed?”

“I found you asleep on my couch last night, so I brought you in here.”

She burrows her face into his stomach. “I forget how jazzed up on super serum you are. ‘Oh yeah, I just picked you up, was it supposed to be hard, now excuse me, I’m going to go do some pullups with two medium sized trucks attached to my feet’.”

“You _forget_?” 

Her eyes flutter shut, and she talks slower. “Yeah. I mean, y’know, the arm, but. I don’t know? Maybe it’s because you’ve never punched me. My survival instincts have got no reason to remember it.” Mumbling goodnight. she kisses the bare square of skin next to her lips and drifts away.

There are things he’s done that he only talks about with Steve. He knows how to think about it, he already knows the bare bones, the details gruesome and sometimes too much to hear, but not for Steve, who’s seen so much war and death thinking about someone else’s memories is a kind of pause in his own pain. More than that Steve wants to listen, and he can bear it when he does. Bucky’s grateful for him, because he knows what kind of man he has been and wants to be again.

Darcy doesn’t see him that way. Darcy sees what he was- all the cracked parts, fissures in his brain where the pain leaked out and scars where they’d soldered the arm on- and all the other parts, too. She sees him laugh at kids’ cartoons and roughhouse with Steve and argue with the microwave. None of it surprises her, because she knows he is human, and he has a past, but it doesn’t colour her vision when she looks at him.

She sees him for what he is. A person.

He holds her a little tighter.

***

That morning, she changes into the bag of clothes he didn’t see the night before and gets up when he does, joining him for breakfast.

“Why so early?” she asks, cheeks hollowed as she blows on the coffee he gives her.

“There’s a fight going down, but we need to see where Stark wants us.”

She nods. “Above my pay grade?”

“I think it’s above my pay grade, to be honest. They just included me because I’m good at throwing a punch and Steve’ll get his ass kicked if I’m not there.”

Darcy snorts. “Pretty sure Steve would knock you round the head for that one.”

“Pretty sure he would try.”

She laughs, drinking as he sat down with a bowl of fresh fruit, next to her at the breakfast bar.

Darcy is still waking up when Steve comes in, tactical gear on already, nodding at Darcy and clapping Bucky on the back. He helps himself to coffee.

“Sup, Cap.” 

“How are you, Darcy?”

“Good.” She points a thumb in Bucky’s direction. “He’s excellent at cuddles, you two definitely should have a session sometime.”

Bucky elbows her, and she fakes pain.

“Oh god… metal arms are my weakness…you’re so strong, how will I ever recover…?” she winks at Steve, picking her mug back up. “Seriously, though, spill my coffee and you won’t make it to your super-secret assignment.”

Bucky leans in. “Is that a promise?” he mutters in her ear, watching goosebumps erupt up her neck. He only pulls away when Steve turns back to them.

“Tony said he’s got a few hopeful leads, but nothing solid yet. He’s chasing it up now.”

Bucky nods, but Darcy watches him through her eyelashes, lips parted, biting her lip slightly. It takes him a second to focus. “Any- any chance we’ll all hit at the same time?”

“It’s not looking likely, but we can hope.”

“Should we delay Vancouver?”

“There’s a shipment at nine. Can’t afford to.”

Bucky nods, finishing his food. “I’ll get changed.”

He disappears into his room, and comes out to find Darcy in Steve’s arms in the kitchen. They haven’t noticed him in the doorway.

“And look after each other, yeah?” she says, pulling out of the hug. “I know that’s what you two _do_ , but.”

Steve nods. “I’ll watch out for him, don’t worry.” He picks up his shield, propped up against a kitchen cabinet.

“Watch out for yourself, too. I’m never helping him through losing you, do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She punches his shoulder, gently. “Urgh. _Ma’am_.”

Steve grins, loading his shield on his back.

Darcy turns around to pick her mug, freezing on seeing Bucky.

“You didn’t-”

“I did.” Bucky tightens the straps on his gloves, one last time. “Ready?”

Steve heads for the door, and Darcy watched Bucky, taking steps towards him. “We weren’t-”

“I know you weren’t,” he says, clearing the distance between them, hands low on her waist. “Steve wouldn’t make a move on my girl.”

Darcy bites her lip, cheeks warming. “Is that what I am?”

“As long as you want to be.”

She kisses him, and she only lets him go when she knows he risks being late. “Be safe,” she tells him, and he waves her away, smiling sheepishly. 

Neither of them have any idea what’s going to happen next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's early, my posting schedule's a bit all over the place atm- gonna have a busy few days  
> (also I cannot write smut hence a distinct lack of it)


	6. Chapter 6

The first explosion, before they knew each other, was an accident. The second one isn’t, or the third.

A short range missile rips a hole in the side of the building three floors high, red alarms blaring, the rush for the stairs a tidal wave of bodies as the elevators automatically deactivate themselves, a calm overheard voice telling everyone to make their way to the lobby and out of the basement to the building next door.

Stark’s already suited up and he leaves a Tony shaped hole in the window behind him, And Steve tosses a sniper rifle at Bucky while he loads his shield on his back.

Nine floors below, Darcy and Jane are getting everyone out.

“The stairs!” they yell. “Don’t trample over anyone, help each other up-”

Certain no one is left on their floor, the building shakes again. They stagger, clutching each other and the walls.

“Go!” Darcy yells, shoving Jane ahead of her. “Now, go-”

Jane runs, and Darcy hesitates, looking up- not down.

“He’s fine!” Jane yells, already a set and a half of stairs down. “Darcy, come _on_ -”

The ceiling collapses, and neither of them know what it is, but they feel it.

***

Bucky shoots the co-pilot between the eyes, using the hole Stark left behind him as the vantage point. The pilot yelps, veering, and gunman in the back loses his hold and plummets to the ground. No one tries to catch him. Stark gives Steve a lift across, Steve extracting the remaining HYDRA operatives and Stark landing the helicopter on the pad on the top of the tower.

They disappear over his head, and Bucky loops the rifle over his shoulder, tapping into his coms. “Steve?”

“ _All the suspects are down_.”

“ _It’s a rescue operation now_ ,” Stark pipes up, grunting.

There are other people in the building.

Bucky is sure, for just a moment, he is the Winter Soldier again. His metal hand turns the barrel of the gun to dust, staring ahead at nothing.

“ _JARVIS_?”

“The structural integrity of the building is undamaged, sir. The floors affected are 96 to 93 and 91 to 88. It appears the assailants were targeting the floors with the most amount of civilians.”

“ _How many dead_?” Stark asks.

“Twelve, sir.”

" _How many trapped_?” Steve asks.

“Fourteen on the 90th floor. They appear to have limited air. Two on the 91st require immediate medical attention, and there are several trapped in the stairways, although most of them are unharmed.”

“ _I’ve got the 90th_.”

“ _I’m on the 91st _.”__

__“Did Darcy Lewis get out?” Bucky says, mouth dry._ _

__“She’s in the stairway. She’s conscious, but trapped under debris.”_ _

__Bucky runs._ _

__***_ _

__A lump of concrete rests on her stomach and chest. It’s hard to breathe._ _

__“Miss Lewis?”_ _

__The voice is distant, from a speaker not meant to talk to her at this distance. The one in the stairwell must have been destroyed._ _

__“JARVIS?” she says. She winces, and she isn’t sure what part of her body the blood has come from, but it’s on her hands._ _

__“Sergeant Barnes is on his way.”_ _

__***_ _

__The ceiling had collapsed in, the 94th onto the 93rd, and the stairwell is blocked. He smashes his fist into a weakened spot in the floor of a corridor, dropping through to a lab coated in dust. JARVIS opens the door for him before he reaches it, and Darcy is ten metres away, flat on her back, only her shoulders and up visible._ _

__It’s the first time since 1944 that bloodshed shocks him._ _

__He runs up to her, sliding the last metres on his knees. Her eyes flutter, as though they might shut. He slaps her hard enough to snap her awake, standing back up._ _

__“You need to move,” he says, grasping the edges of the concrete. She nods. “One, two, three-”_ _

__He strains against it, and she kicks out, rolling away. He lowers it to the ground once she’s clear. Falling beside her, he rolls her onto her back, head resting on his folded up jacket._ _

__“Darcy?”_ _

__“Shh,” she says, holding his arm where he tries to shake her. “M’hurt.”_ _

__“She has severe internal bleeding, Sergeant Barnes.”_ _

__He doesn’t want to touch her, he doesn’t want to hurt her. “Steve, Stark, I need help, I can’t get her downstairs-”_ _

__“ _Is she hurt_?”_ _

__“She needs surgery, sir,” JARVIS says. “By my approximation, in the next twenty minutes, or she will have lost too much blood.”_ _

__“Jane?” she says, fingers playing with the edge of his sleeve._ _

__“Dr Foster is currently hysterical, but unharmed, Miss Lewis. She’s trying to get to you.”_ _

__“Tell her… I’m with Bucky.” She’s crying, but her face isn’t crumpled. She’s looking up at him._ _

__He turns the coms on again. “Is anyone coming-?”_ _

__“ _There’s a second helicopter, I’m taking it out_.”_ _

__“You’re here,” Darcy says, reaching up._ _

__He kisses the palm of her hand, smoothing away her tears. Leaning over her, pressing his cheek to hers, his metal fingers thread through her hair and she kisses his neck, the part of him she can reach._ _

__“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I don’t know what to say.”_ _

__“Talk after,” he says, and the coms crackle again._ _

__“ _The doctors are working on floor 10. Most serious cases go there, anyone who can wait more than half an hour without dying gets an ambulance out_.”_ _

__Bucky pulls his coms out, throwing them on the floor. He doesn’t jostle her._ _

__“Thank you… for coming for- me,” Darcy says. He draws back, and her face paler, breathing more shallow, she smiles. “I wouldn’t want anyone else.”_ _

__“I wouldn’t let anyone else.”_ _

__It’s her turn to wipe his tears away, her hand cupping his cheek. He presses it there._ _

__“I think…” She struggles to keep her eyes open, arm slacking. “Bucky…”_ _

__Her eyes close. JARVIS recommends not moving her unless vital, and he only holds her hand. Through open lips, her breathing’s ragged and she’s covered in dust and dirt. Bucky realises he’s shaking, kissing her on the forehead before Stark sweeps her away, flying her down to floor ten._ _

__He slumps back, staring where she’d been lying, and his hand falls on the coms. Shoving them in his ear, he starts digging to Jane._ _

__***_ _

__Everyone alive is out of the building in the first thirty minutes after the attack. Bucky rounds up the people in the stairwell, finding alternate routes out. The only person he takes to floor ten is a middle aged man with glass lodged in his side, but he doesn’t hang around, doesn’t wait, doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to know yet. He throws Jane over his shoulder when she refuses to do the same, tuning her screeches and pounding fists out. She needs checking herself, having scrabbled at the fallen ceiling with bare hands, and she’s inhaled a lot of dust._ _

__Steve coordinates with the firefighters and recovery teams, directing them to the areas where it’s safe to search. Stark’s already up there, sifting through rubble._ _

__In the lobby, Bucky hands Jane off to a paramedic for a sedative. She shoves them away, nails digging into his upper arm._ _

__“Is she alive? You’ve got to-”_ _

__“I don’t know.”_ _

__“Then find out!”_ _

__The paramedics pull her away. He sits down on a window ledge, head in hands, dirt under his nails and covered in blood. He waves off a paramedic himself._ _

__He raises his hands to the coms, fingers hovering over the button. He clicks it._ _

__“Report on Darcy Lewis.”_ _

__“She’s still in surgery, Sergeant Barnes.”_ _

__Still alive. Still breathing._ _

__“ _Buck, are you around_?”_ _

__He wipes away the tears, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Yeah, lobby.”_ _

__“ _I need you to take a team of firefighters up to floor 88. I’m on 2 _.” The Avengers are still three hours out. Apparently, Vancouver got a message to New York operatives to act early, the Avengers and their associates their targets.___ _

____Some of the elevators are still operational, JARVIS rebooting them and taking them up to 88, the rest of the floors picked through manually. He loads as much of their equipment onto his back as he could, taking them up the way he came down. Steve follows them up, then passes them, starting at 93._ _ _ _

____Bucky isn’t sure how long he works in tandem with the firefighters, clearing lumps of concrete and twisted metal. They’re more disconcerted by JARVIS than his arm, who occasionally advises them of dangers ahead of them, but the Lieutenant raises an eyebrow the first time he lifts a steel beam out of their way, putting it down carefully._ _ _ _

____They find the bodies. Arranged in body bags, they’re out of sight quickly, but JARVIS assures them no one alive is trapped._ _ _ _

____It’s reassuring and stirs dread in the pit of their stomachs._ _ _ _

____Hours later, when the firefighters aren’t finished with recovery but there isn’t much else they can offer, Stark leaves to make a statement, and Steve sits down with Bucky in the lobby, offering him a bottle of water._ _ _ _

____“How is she?”_ _ _ _

____Bucky’s jaw clenches, staring ahead. “Last I heard, in surgery.”_ _ _ _

____JARVIS intercedes. “She’s in recovery now, Sergeant. She’s unconscious.”_ _ _ _

____A firefighter approaches them, as exhausted as them. They both stand up. “Thanks for your help, really appreciate it,” he says, shaking their hands._ _ _ _

____Bucky nods, and finds himself walking to the stairs. He hasn’t even looked at Steve._ _ _ _

____He climbs upwards, more familiar with the stairwell than he’d ever been before. The medical floor is clean, and quiet. All the doctors are operating, and no patients are waiting. Bucky finds Darcy’s room on his own._ _ _ _

____She’s been cleaned up, although her hair is grimy and limp._ _ _ _

____The monitors are bleating, and he doesn’t know much what it means, but a nurse comes in and jumps at the sight of him, standing over her._ _ _ _

____“How is she?”_ _ _ _

____The nurse is familiar. She’d been the first person to respond to his call for help for the man with glass in his side._ _ _ _

____“The surgeon performed an exploratory laparotomy, which is a where an incision is made in the abdomen to find the source of the internal bleeding and seal it. Under the circumstances, she did well in surgery, and her response has been very promising so far, but she won’t be out of danger for at least another twelve hours. There may be more bleeding we have to fix.”_ _ _ _

____He nods, once._ _ _ _

____“You can’t be in here, you know.”_ _ _ _

____He can’t tear his eyes off her._ _ _ _

____“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”_ _ _ _

____He closes his eyes, and pulls away, leaving the way he came. He sits in the empty waiting room, rigid and unmoving._ _ _ _

____One by one, visitors trickle in. Some are loud, crying, screaming- others only speak to ask if their loved ones are alive. Like Bucky, they are asked to wait, but the seats around him stay empty, some standing to avoid nearing him. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t look._ _ _ _

____A woman marches in, her high heels clacking on the tiles sharp in the thick air._ _ _ _

____“Melissa Bridges, 23, engineer on the 89th floor.”_ _ _ _

____The nurse takes a moment, flipping through files. “She’s in surgery.”_ _ _ _

____“I’ll wait,” the woman nods. To the unasked question, she answers; “she’s my daughter.”_ _ _ _

____Striding across the room, she sits next to Bucky, smoothing her skirt and putting her briefcase down._ _ _ _

____Bucky shifts, away from her._ _ _ _

____She glances up, sees his arm, then his face. “Who are you waiting for?”_ _ _ _

____“A friend.”_ _ _ _

____Appraising him, she glances at her phone. “How long have you been here?”_ _ _ _

____Long enough that the shifting metal plates in his arm feel stiff. “Not sure.”_ _ _ _

____“I’ve been here two hours,” one man pipes up. He’d gotten there after Bucky._ _ _ _

____She nods at him. “Thank you.”_ _ _ _

____Bucky swallows, watching the nurse who does not look up from her computer screen._ _ _ _

____“It’s all over the news, what you did.” The woman is staring at her knees, dragging away to look at him. “You helped get everyone out.”_ _ _ _

____He doesn’t say anything, hands resting in his lap._ _ _ _

____“Do you know who got my daughter here?”_ _ _ _

____“It wasn’t me.”_ _ _ _

____She doesn’t answer, staring ahead again._ _ _ _

____A few are taken to see their son. Another to see her wife. The woman is taken to see her daughter immediately after surgery._ _ _ _

____Jane comes in, the slash on her arm stitched up, gaze dazed. Bucky stands up, and she approaches him._ _ _ _

____“We can’t see her yet. She’s out of surgery, though.”_ _ _ _

____Jane nods, and sits next to him. She takes his hand, not looking at him._ _ _ _

____More people arrive. A few people leave. A woman rushes in, demanding to see her sister, and the nurse takes her to a private office._ _ _ _

____They all hear her scream when she is told her sister is dead, and Bucky realises Jane’s hand is white she is squeezing his hand so hard, tears rolling down her cheeks._ _ _ _

____The nurse approaches them, and they both stand up._ _ _ _

____“One visitor at a time,” she says, glancing between them. “She’s still asleep. She lost a lot of blood.”_ _ _ _

____Bucky nods at Jane to go first. He sits down again, fixated on the wall in front of him, knowing she’ll be there until Darcy woke up. He keeps pinching the back of his hand, every thirty seconds, watching the clock tick. It is something to think about._ _ _ _

____Nine pinches later, he jumps out his reverie- Jane is stood in front of him, eyes watery._ _ _ _

____“Let me know when she wakes up, won’t you?”_ _ _ _

____He stares at her._ _ _ _

____“You- she always talks, about how you lost so much. If I’m there when she wakes up, she’ll kick my ass.”_ _ _ _

____Having JARVIS set an automatic alert to Darcy’s waking up, Jane leaves, and Bucky’s escorted to Darcy’s room._ _ _ _

____For all the ways he’s learnt from her how to touch people- hold their hands, squeezing their shoulder, hugs that pull you into intimacy- he doesn’t go near her now. Every exhale deflates her chest visibly, her eyes closed, and he is still covered in dirt._ _ _ _

____Going to the sink to wash his hand, Bucky glances at himself in the mirror, doing a double take. Most of the blood has dried, brown now, and the dust covers him, but there is no mistaking that the handprint left on his face was blood left by Darcy. He scrubs his hands, arms, face and neck, the blood surprisingly red in contact with the water where the dust goes darker. Until he watches it go down the drain, he doesn’t know what he’s washing off._ _ _ _

____A nurse pokes his head around the door. “Steve Rogers is in the waiting room. He’s asking for you.”_ _ _ _

____Quicker than Bucky can answer, he disappears again._ _ _ _

____He takes several deep breaths, kissing her forehead, and stalks down the hall._ _ _ _

____Steve throws his arms around Bucky in the middle of the waiting room, as filthy and stricken as Bucky feels._ _ _ _

____“How is she?”_ _ _ _

____“Hasn’t woken up yet.”_ _ _ _

____Swallowing, Steve nods. “I’m gonna go take a shower- the other Avengers are back now, they’re taking over- and then I’ll come down to watch her while you shower, okay?”_ _ _ _

____Bucky shakes his head, stepping back. “I’m not leaving her. I’ve gotta go back.”_ _ _ _

____Jaw tight, Steve sighs. “I’ll be out here anyway. Until she wakes up.”_ _ _ _

____Bucky nods once, retracing his steps back to the room- forward ten steps, left, twenty more steps, right._ _ _ _

____The room is empty._ _ _ _

____Still, standing in the doorway, Bucky stares. The whole bed isn’t there anymore, it’s clear, as though she’s never been there. His metal hand’s rammed itself into his stomach and crushed handfuls of organs, he’s sure of it, he can’t breathe-_ _ _ _

____A nurse is walking past him. He steps in her way, ignoring her flinch backwards, he just closes that distance again. He struggles to keep his tone level._ _ _ _

____“Darcy Lewis. She was in here. Where is she?”_ _ _ _

____The nurse glances at his arm, collecting herself. “She was taken back into surgery. There was more internal bleeding.”_ _ _ _

____Losing all feeling in his legs, he staggers against the wall. He nearly bats away the nurse’s hand, steadying his shoulder._ _ _ _

____“We caught it before any more damage was done. It’s only a small rupture, and if there’re no complications it should be easy to fix.”_ _ _ _

____He nods, staring past her, trying to hold on to the hope she offers, but the tips of his fingers can barely cling on. “Will she come back here?”_ _ _ _

____“Yes, for the time being we allocated her this room.”_ _ _ _

____“Thank you.”_ _ _ _

____She leaves him stands there, but once she turns a corner he sinks to his knees, staring at the floor. He doesn’t know what he’ll do without her. He doesn’t know what it’ll mean, how his life will change, he isn’t lying when he said she’d ruined other women for him, no one looked at him the way she did and he doesn’t want them to._ _ _ _

____He rocks backwards, legs curled up to his chest, staring at the corridor wall opposite him. He doesn’t know how long he is there._ _ _ _

____***_ _ _ _

____It takes an hour for Steve to find him, shaking as though he’s cold. Steve drags him upright, pushing him into Darcy’s room and sitting him down, putting something blue on the side._ _ _ _

____Hand on either arm of his chair, he leans over him. “Bucky, look at me.”_ _ _ _

____It’s as though he hasn’t spoken, hasn’t moved him. Bucky doesn’t say a word._ _ _ _

____“ _Goddammit_ , Bucky-”_ _ _ _

____“I thought we had time.”_ _ _ _

____“Buck, she ain’t dead.”_ _ _ _

____“Everyone dies.”_ _ _ _

____“She’s not dead yet.”_ _ _ _

____“She will die, though.”_ _ _ _

____“This isn’t your fault-”_ _ _ _

____“It is-”_ _ _ _

____“It’s her _job_ that put her here. Not you. She’d still be in here if you didn’t know her.”_ _ _ _

____“I’m gonna kill her. It’s gonna be my fault. One day, I’ll just- _Winter Soldier_ , and she’ll die.”_ _ _ _

____Steve opens and closes his mouth, several times, then pulls back, gesturing to the door. “If you really believe that, Bucky, you gotta leave now. You’ve gotta go.”_ _ _ _

____As though drunk, Bucky slowly looks at the door. He stands up, looking down at his metal arm, all shifting plates and destruction. He takes one, faltering step to the door._ _ _ _

____He looks at his other hand. Flesh; malleable and breakable. Like hers._ _ _ _

____Hands clenched tight, he backs up and sits down._ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter...


	7. Chapter 7

Drugged up, Darcy wakes not making much sense. By the time Jane arrives, Darcy’s already asleep again, but she stays. The nurses relent their one-person rule at Steve’s unmoved stare, and he stands outside the door. It’s unspoken between them that Bucky feels more comfortable that way.

Darcy drifts in and out for another few hours until she achieves coherency.

“Where ‘m I?”

“You’re on the medical floor,” Jane tells Darcy, holding her arm. “You got hurt.”

Darcy drags her eyes open, frowning at Jane. “You blow something else up?”

Jane smiles, eyes tight. “No, there was an attack. You were in the stairwell, and the ceiling collapsed.”

“Hmm,” Darcy says, looking across at Bucky. Her face relaxes. “Hello.”

“Hello,” he chokes out, and she tangles her hand in his, resting on the bed. 

“You were there, weren’t you?”

Bucky nods, swiping away tears. “Yeah.”

She sighs, moving her head. She winces. “Oww.”

“You had internal bleeding,” Jane says, touching her hand. “They had to make three incisions, you’re not going to be moving for a while.”

“Three?” Darcy says, looking at her. “Big, or?”

“The first was the biggest,” Bucky says, voice still hoarse. “Three inches. The second two were smaller, two inches or so.”

She tests, barely moving. “In my stomach?”

“One’s on your lower back.”

Darcy nods, blinking. “Okay. Okay, so- scarring, yeah?”

“They might fade, with time.”

She sighs, pulling herself out of her body for a moment. “It’s better than dying.”

“It is.”

“Am I in the clear?”

“They’re hopeful,” Jane says. “It went as well as it could have, and your blood pressure is stable, but you’re going to be in here a while.”

“Good. Okay. I can work with that.”

Her bedside table already has a bouquet of flowers on it. Later, she’ll discover Tony flew to a local florist after the dust of the press conference had settled and there was nothing more for him to do, but it isn’t what catches her eye.

Her Captain America plushie smiles back at her, a little dusty, a rip in one seam, but otherwise fine.

“You went back for him?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Steve found him.”

If she could have bolted upright, she would have. “What?!” As it is, lungfuls of air aren’t too comfortable either.

“Turns out he’s known for months. He likes being your mascot.”

“He _knew_? Fuck that guy.”

Bucky snickers, and Darcy pokes his hand.

“Don’t laugh at the invalid. You’ve got to be nice to me now.”

“I’m always nice.”

***

For the first few nights, neither of them sleep well, but he isn’t allowed there during the night. They texts each other a lot, back and forth at four in the morning, but usually by the time he arrives there she is asleep. He stays as long as the doctors let him, filling in crosswords when they have nothing to say, Darcy whiling away her hours doing Sudoku. He doesn’t use the internet, he just asks her, and sometimes they’ll learn something together- like what a ‘subordinating conjunction’ is.

Stark only makes the mistake of ribbing Bucky over Darcy once- he didn’t know they are together- because Steve shoves him out of the room, low angry whispers in the corridor followed by Stark’s awkward nod, his version of an apology. 

Natasha sews up the Captain America plushie for her one afternoon. She kisses both of them on the cheek, wishing Darcy well and tucking it in the bed beside her, and Darcy can’t even tell it was ripped. Steve catches Natasha on the way out, chatting outside the door for a few minutes, before coming in with his own flowers.

After a week, Darcy’s under strict instructions, but she’s allowed to leave. No questions asked, Steve went to her apartment and gathered up her stuff, her staying in Bucky’s room for the time being. Her apartment is too far away from a hospital, and everyone can keep an eye on her in the tower.

Bucky walks in on her in the bedroom a month after it happened. She’s taken off her shirt, fingers running over the white of her scars, twisting around to look at the one on her back. He leans against the doorframe.

“You okay?”

She jumps, picking up her tank top. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just being vain, is all.”

“If I were you I’d stare in the mirror a lot, too. No judgement here.”

Biting her smile, she puts her top back on. One of the marks is frayed at the edges where the stitches loosened, the scar on her back a definitive groove under fingertips. It’s her first moment of real fear, and he waits until she starts towards him, and then he pulls her into a hug, the side of her glasses digging into his neck, her hands pressing in between his shoulder blades.

It’s a moment they both forget, eventually. Darcy clings to it longer, reminding herself the scars aren’t ugly, that no one who loves her would ever be disgusted by them, but it passes Bucky by. He barely thinks anything of it. Remembering holding her isn’t nearly as good as doing it in the present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, thank you. I can’t say it enough.  
> When I started writing this story, it was a, 6,000-words-in-three-days-then-writer’s-block deal last summer. I struggled with it- to give you an idea of how much, one of the drafts has logged over 190 hours of editing time- to the point where I nearly finished it, hated it, and gave up. I stopped writing it. Then, I decided to post it, because I needed to get it out of my head and my mate reckoned the Darcy/Bucky fandom is awesome.  
> You guys made me fall in love with this story again and helped me finish it. Thank you for giving me that.
> 
> Also, in case anyone's curious... [here's Darcy's mascot](http://gingergenower.tumblr.com/post/156562229719/darcys-mascot)


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